


Inertia

by QuarticMoose



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Family Feels, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Humor, For Science!, Gen, Ice Cream, Introspection, Iris does research, Merlin Crossover, One Shot Collection, Sickfic, Slice of Life, cat rescue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-02-24 19:15:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 29
Words: 46,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2593169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarticMoose/pseuds/QuarticMoose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of ficlets and one-shots, most family-centric, introspective, and/or science-inspired.</p>
<p>Now up: Performance Review. The one where Singh has reason to look back on his past interactions with Barry Allen. Sequel to 'The Follow-Up'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Keraunopathy

**Author's Note:**

> Brief pseudo-table of contents: If you're looking for a particular character, significant appearances are as follows (POV chapters marked with *)
> 
> Caitlin Snow: 6, 12, 20  
> Cisco Ramon: 6, 12*, 20, 27*  
> David Singh: 22*, 24*, 29*  
> Henry Allen: 10*, 15, 25, 26*  
> Iris West: 1*, 4, 8, 11, 15, 16*, 18*  
> Joe West: 2, 5*, 8, 9*, 14*, 15, 16, 25*  
> Wally West: 28
> 
> Crossovers in chapters 13 (Merlin) and 18 (Gargoyles)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's raining outside, and Iris is pensive

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set very early season 1

Most days, Iris was too grateful that Barry was alive, and awake, to worry about his health.

Most days, she was content to hang out with her best friend and listen to him take off on science-geek tangents. Barry had always been an open book; he wore his heart on his sleeve, and when he was passionate about something, his whole face would become animated as he shared his wonder with the world, and Iris loved him for it.

Most days, Iris could revel in having Barry back in her life, after waiting in uncertainty for nine months - _nine months!_

Today was not one of those days.

Today had started out gloomy and gray, which from the get-go was a major downer. But as the evening wore on, an autumn thunderstorm had started up. Iris watched the lightning with cold dread in her stomach, and remembered everything she wished she hadn't learned.

Iris was no science wiz. That was all Barry's area of expertise, and she was lucky she'd had his help tutoring her in high school chem. But she was good at research, at finding things out. That was one of the reasons Barry had recommended she take Journalism as an elective (that, and he'd said it would be _fun_ , which she still wasn't sold on). So when Barry was lying (dying) in a hospital bed _after being struck by lightning_ , she did some research. She wanted to know they were doing everything they could for him, wanted to know what to expect.

A lot of the stuff she'd dug up was full of too much medical jargon to make sense to her - _keraunopathy_ and _Lichtenberg figures_ and _electroporation_ \- and more than once she'd caught herself thinking that she'd ask Barry to clarify a point as soon as he got back from work, and then her whole reality would come crashing down around her again.

What she could make heads or tails of, was not good.

Wikipedia had an entire page devoted to lightning injuries, that spelled it out in layman's terms. _"Long-term injuries are usually neurological in nature, including_ _memory deficit_ _,_ _sleep disturbance_ _,_ _chronic pain_ _, and chronic_ _dizziness."_ The 'delayed' symptoms were what worried her the most. Because Barry _said_ he felt fine now, but some symptoms - like cataracts - could develop over a year after an otherwise uneventful recovery. And being in a coma, with multiple heart failures, was not what Iris would call uneventful.

Most days, his big geeky science brain was just as overflowing with facts as it ever was, which made the thought of brain damage laughable. But as NOAA pointed out in greater detail, neurological damage didn't have to mean a dip in I.Q. points.

So while most days Iris was grateful, and happy, and willing to help Barry get his life back to normal, other days she kept a worried eye out for: Distractibility. Inattentiveness or forgetfulness. Problems multitasking. Slower reaction time. Headaches which do not resolve with usual over-the-counter-meds. Chronic pain. Self-isolation. Difficulty carrying on a conversation. Depression. Personality changes.

She tried to act like how she normally would have, before the lightning strike. She didn't draw undue attention to Barry's lapses in attention, forgotten appointments, his headaches. He had a lot of catching up to do, a lot going on, and she tried to give him the space he needed to find his feet again.

But Barry was keeping things from her. He'd become evasive, and at times secretive. He always seemed like he had something he wanted to say, but he never said it. She knew all this because that boy had no poker face whatsoever (which made it absolutely hilarious in the most tragically ironic way whenever he decided he needed to sing along to Lady Gaga). She tried to make sure he knew he had a support network he could count on, that she would be there for him no matter what, but more and more it seemed like he was pulling away.

_Forgetfulness. Self-isolation. Personality changes…Depression?_

In the present, Iris curled up on her bed, wrapped in the warmest, softest blanket she owned, and shivered as the thunderstorm beat angrily at the window.


	2. Fighting Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe has a thing or two he'd like to teach Barry. Barry's more or less willing to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place anytime after 1x02, The Fastest Man Alive

"Are you ready to get started?"

Nodding, Barry walked with some trepidation onto the mats in one corner of the precinct's gym. Across from him, Joe was dressed similarly to Barry in dark sweatpants and a loose t-shirt. It was early, and a Wednesday, and they had the space to themselves.

Joe spoke authoritatively, the same _don't-bother-arguing-with-me_ tone he'd taken when he'd told Barry to _meet me in the gym tomorrow morning at six for practice._ "Barry, if you're going to go out there and do the things you are meant to do, you're going to have to learn some self-defense."

And wow, okay, that really wasn't what Barry had been expecting. "You've been so reluctant to let me do this, I didn't think you'd want to..." he trailed off, unable to think of a way to end that sentence that didn't make it sound like he doubted Joe. He knew he had Joe's support, now, but this felt dangerously close to _encouragement,_ which was a complete 180-degree turnaround from Joe's initial reaction.

"I want you _safe_. That means knowing how to take care of yourself. Your strongest defense is your speed, your ability to dodge whatever's thrown your way. But Barry, what if someone gets lucky, and you get knocked off your feet? That's all it would take to neutralize your speed, and then what are you left with?" - Which, yeah, made Barry _sooo_ glad Joe hadn't been around to see his fight with Danton Black, he worried enough as it was - "So, today, you are going to learn to fall. And then, you are going to learn how to get up again."

"And then...?" Now that he knew why he was here, he was hoping for a little more than _falling and getting up again_ , which he'd had pretty well figured out since he was a toddler.

But Joe only shrugged, "That's all we'll have time for today, I expect. But next week, you are going to learn how to stand so that - " Joe reached over and pushed _hard_ at Barry's shoulder, who took a small step back to keep from tipping over "- you aren't so easy to knock over to begin with. Now, come stand next to me."

Barry did as he asked, startling Joe by being _prompt_. Joe swatted his shoulder in retaliation, and got down to business.

"Bend your knees. Tuck your chin - you don't want your head to hit the floor. Roll with the motion, and slap both hands to the mat at the same time as you do - it helps disperse your momentum"

He demonstrated, falling smoothly backwards, his arms impacting the mat to either side with a loud _smack_.

When Barry tried it, it felt clumsy and slow. But he got up and tried it again.

\- "Don't catch yourself on your hands, you'll injure your wrists. Just slap as you come down."

And again.

\- "You're still slapping too soon - the timing is key."

And again. He was getting increasingly frustrated, feeling more like a klutz than he ever had since he'd woken up as the Fastest Man Alive. He should be better at this - it was simple physics. A single object in free-fall, a constant rate of acceleration. He could apply the Second Law of Motion, that the net force applied equaled the product of his body's mass and acceleration, though that wouldn't be as helpful as calculating what the _impulse_ would be, given that this was essentially an impact problem. _Impulse: when a force acts over an interval of time, measured in kilogram-meters per second._ If he increased the duration of the impact, he'd decrease the impulse, which was likely the objective in 'learning to fall the right way.' He could figure out the ideal impact time, given the known quantities of his body's mass, the rate of acceleration due to gravity, his height...

"You're running math problems in your head, aren't you?"

"Well..." No point in denying it; Joe knew him too well.

"You just need to let go, Barry. You trust me, right?"

"Yeah, of course." He shrugged; he thought that was well-established, though he didn't see how it applied, since Joe wasn't offering to catch him or anything.

"Then trust me when I say, it's not going to hurt if you let yourself fall. That's what the mat is for. You aren't going to get it perfectly the first time, or the third time, or the twelfth time. That's why we practice. You've still got mental brakes on, holding you back. Just let go, and fall."

Barry took a couple of deep breaths to clear the formulae from his head. Now that it had been pointed out to him, he could see how his stiffness and clumsiness came from his body instinctively resisting the fall. He tipped backwards once again, making a conscious effort to remain relaxed and loose - and this time he could feel the difference it made, falling smoothly and evenly. Lying flat on his back, he grinned up at Joe, who smiled back at him, filling Barry with a warm glow of pride. And then Joe said, "Better. Now do it again."

After two hours of repetition, Barry could finally fall backwards, forwards, and sideways to Joe's satisfaction, and he progressed to showing Barry how to regain his feet quickly. Joe insisted that Barry do the exercises slowly (relatively speaking), so that Joe could see that he was doing it _correctly_.

"You want to practice this until it becomes muscle memory, and that means you want to practice it _right_. With your speed, you could get back up in a fraction of a second, but just because you can do it faster than anyone else, doesn't mean you can't do it better. Speed isn't the answer to everything. You gotta be smart, and efficient, and _then_ you've got to be fast. And if you're smart and efficient, your fastest will be even faster."

That... actually made a lot of sense.

"Hey, Joe - Thanks for taking the time to show me all this."

"Anytime, son. Anytime."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In Jack London's White Fang, the titular character learns that in order to survive in the dog-fighting ring, he must be quick, and never allow himself to be knocked off his feet or he'll _have his jugular torn open in seconds_. I was reminded of this when the tables turn on Barry as soon as he's knocked down and unable to utilize his speed in defense. I think Joe's coming from a very sane, rational place when he argues that just being superfast does not make someone equipped to fight crime on a regular basis. But if Barry's going to do it anyway, Joe's going to make sure he has a fighting chance.


	3. Streaky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Joe said, Barry is something like a supersonic fireman. And that means pulling the occasional cat out of a tree.

"Was that Andrea I just saw leaving? She's a little young for coffee, don't you think?" Barry joked as he walked into Jitters, sauntering over to Iris. (Well, okay, probably not sauntering - that was a bit beyond his abilities - but he liked to think he walked with more confidence nowadays.)

"She's thirteen now, and she was just putting up a flyer on the board." Iris set down her tray and nodded to the notice board in question, liberally papered with community news. "Her cat's gone missing."

"Oh, that's too bad." He didn't know Andrea particularly well, but he had tagged along a couple of times when Iris used to babysit for the Sussmans, and what he did remember was a sweet, caring girl who was absolutely devoted to her pets.

"You'll keep an eye out, won't you? While you're out and about?" Iris asked, not with any sort of expectation, but rather full of the optimistic hope that if enough good-hearted people looked for the cat, of course it would be found. And how could Barry say no to that?

"Of course! I'm sure it'll be found in no time." That was barely even hyperbole, moving at his speeds.

"Thanks Barry!" She slung one arm around him in a quick hug, giving him a radiant smile, "I knew I could count on you."

They chatted for a few minutes more, but Iris was still on the clock and the tables weren't going to bus themselves. Barry wandered over to look at the new Lost Pet poster. The cat on the poster had bright orange fur and green eyes. Barry raised his eyebrow when he saw that it was named 'Streaky,' further cementing his conviction that 'The Streak' was a _terrible_ name for his alter-ego, and he _really_ needed to find a subtle way to shift Iris on this point.

* * *

Starting at the Sussmans' townhouse and working his way in concentric circles, it only took him 23 seconds to find the felonious feline. Getting him out of the tree was another matter; fortunately, the scratches were already completely healed by the time he worked his way back to the ground, cat in tow.

His next order of business was a little less clear.

He could change back into his civvies and bring the cat directly to Andrea, return the cat as Barry Allen and decline the reward, and get a little recognition for this one small, not-even-barely-heroic thing. It wasn't as though finding a cat in a tree would raise suspicious flags and convince people he was a meta-human.

He would just bring it to S.T.A.R. Labs to wait out the necessary length of time for his rescue to become credible, since finding it less than a minute after he saw the poster was not exactly low-key.

In his arms, Streaky mrow'ed softly and rubbed his head against Barry's chin.

Between himself, Cisco, and Caitlin (he wasn't sure if Dr. Wells was a cat-person or not), he was sure they could keep the little guy happy for a couple of hours… leaving Andrea out of her mind with worry for that little bit longer.

Or he could ding-dong-ditch the cat at her doorstep, and take no credit, and reunite a girl and her lost pet.

Barry sighed, wishing there was a wall nearby to thump his head against. Why was it that he couldn't even get a _little_ recognition for his good Samaritan acts? And this time it was something anyone could have done, with enough time and patience.

The cat in question bumped its head against Barry again, meowing more insistently. He obliged, shifting his grip to free one hand to scratch Streaky behind the ears. He definitely needed to convert Iris to 'The Flash,' before 'The Streak' really caught on.

* * *

*****Alternate Ending*****

"Dr. Wells! I've found a meta-cat!"

"A what?"

"It can fly and shoot lasers out of its eyes!"

"…"

"What do I do with it?

"…Bring it back to STAR Labs."

Easier said than done. The cat took a lot of coaxing - it was largely indifferent to his 'here kitty kitty's repeated _ad nauseam_ , and no headway was made until Cisco and Caitlin turned up to render their assistance (read: see what was taking so long. Moreover, Cisco had evidently been recording the audio from the suit, and wanted some video files to make his blackmail complete). Caitlin was surprisingly good at kitty-talk, and had the lethally-superpowered feline curled up and purring in her arms inside of three minutes, which was so not fair.

They eventually decided to put it in one of their meta-human holding cells, everyone making frequent visits down that way to play with it. That lasted a few days, until a white dog with a red cape crashed through the wall, scooped up the cat, and flew away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I was just going to borrow the name. Then the cameos happened =0.o=


	4. Awake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's three a.m., and Barry can't sleep. He's not alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set pre-series, circa 2005, Barry and Iris are around 16

Barry rolled flat on his back and stared at the ceiling. He'd already tried counting prime-numbered sheep, and deep breathing exercises, and everything else he could think of, but his mind remained stubbornly awake.

His ceiling was boring, but not in a sleep-inducing way. It offered nothing to distract him, so the gears of his brain could keep whirring, whirring, whirring.

He rolled onto his side instead. Now his blanket was tangled around his legs. He spent about five minutes settling it, but even that couldn't last forever.

The green digits of his alarm clock read 3:07

Over two hours since he'd tried to fall asleep, and he wasn't even drowsy.

This was so pointless.

He rolled out of bed and crept his way down the hall to the staircase, but as he neared the banister, he saw that the light was already on downstairs in the living room, so he walked the rest of the way normally, without trying to be quiet.

Iris was stretched out on the couch, the blue-striped afghan tucked snuggly around her. The tv was on mute; the late-night news stations having already moved past their breaking stories for the evening, it was now set on TVLand, playing reruns of 'The Andy Griffith Show'. She smiled when she saw him walk in. He smiled back.

"Hey, budge over." He nudged her feet and she complied, tucking her feet in to give him room to settle on the couch, obligingly lifting the blanket for him so they could share. Then she promptly stretched out to occupy the whole couch again, dropping her feet in his lap (he rolled his eyes, but didn't push them away).

"I wasn't sure if you were still awake. You seemed pretty tired," Iris smiled, and poked him in the stomach with one toe.

Barry shrugged, "History test tomorrow. I'd hoped to get a full night's sleep, but…well."

"Yeah." Iris agreed, sobering.

"Did you start the hot chocolate already?" Barry redirected.

"I just said I wasn't sure if you were still awake."

"So, what, you're incapable of having chocolate alone? Why do I find that - _hey!_ " He knocked the pillow away from his face, remembering a much younger Iris on a night much the same ('They're called _throw pillows_ for a reason,' he'd told her, and he'd never regretted it). "No, don't get up; I've got it." He made sure to re-tuck the blanket around her feet as he vacated the couch.

In the kitchen, he set a pan of milk to warm on the stove, adding the chocolate syrup with flair (two counter-clockwise circles, followed by three clockwise, a little superstition his mother taught him to set things right). From the living room behind him, sound returned to the television, as there wasn't any reason to keep it muted anymore. He stirred the hot chocolate occasionally until it was ready, then returned to Iris with two steaming mugs, just in time to see the credits roll.

"Thanks, Barry," she took her mug from him gratefully. She curled up around her chocolate beverage and let him have a full half of the couch (he tried not to be disappointed). "'I Love Lucy' is on next."

"Next-next like right now, or next-after-this-block-of-Andy-Griffith?"

"Next after another episode of Andy Griffith."

Barry turned his head to look at the front door, "It shouldn't be much longer, should it? It's already been over two hours since the standoff ended." The standoff with an armed robber at a local convenience store, to which Joe had been a responder. It was over and done with now, nobody hurt, old news, but Joe still wasn't home yet, because _bureaucracy_ was a _process_. And even knowing Joe was perfectly fine and safe didn't make it any easier to fall asleep.

Iris shrugged tersely, and sipped her cocoa.

On-screen, the theme-song whistled its way gaily through the opening credits.

"How about checkers?" Barry offered.

Iris smiled, full and wide and genuine, "I call red."

They played checkers and sipped hot chocolate, the early-early-morning television forgotten in the background, until Officer Joe West came home fifteen minutes later.


	5. Chickenpox

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry has the chickenpox, and it's Joe's turn to look after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set pre-series, Barry is 8 years old
> 
> NB: Yes, Nora is still alive at this time. No, she does not appear in this story. The reason why is explained in-text, but only briefly, and possible to miss

With the amount of time those two kids spent together, it was no surprise they came down with chickenpox at the same time. It hadn't been so bad when they were both home sick and could keep each other company, but Iris had gone back to school the day before yesterday and Barry was getting _bored_.

Joe rubbed a tired hand over his face as he got out of bed. They'd arranged it so that Allen watched the kids in the morning until he had to leave for the clinic at ten, at which point Joe would take over and watch until he had to leave for his evening patrol at six, just a half hour after Allen got home. This meant that the bulk of the sick-kid-nursing was done by Joe, despite Allen being an _actual medical doctor_. Which wasn't fair to Allen, who would've stayed home if he could have. But Nora had never had chickenpox before, so even though she _desperately_ wanted to take care of the kiddies, Allen was even more desperately determined that she not catch it, and Joe was left operating on about four hours of sleep a night.

When Joe dragged himself down the stairs at ten o'clock, Barry was already ensconced on the couch in front of Bill Nye, magazines scattered over the coffee table and a half-finished glass of water precariously close to falling off. Joe scooted it back to a better position.

"Dad already left." The eight-year-old informed him in all seriousness, "I asked him why there wasn't medicine for chickenpox, and he said that anti-biotics don't work on viruses because they target the bacterial ribosums, and viruses don't have ribosums."

"He said all that, did he?" Joe made a detour to the kitchen for the coffee machine, the pot already three-quarters full. _Thank you, Henry._ Barry waited patiently for his return - his color was much better than yesterday, and his spots were almost completely faded.

"Yeah. But then he had to leave before he could tell me what a ribosum was."

Joe chuckled, shaking his head ruefully. "I'm sorry, Barry. I can't help you there."

"Oh." He blinked owlishly up at Joe, "Don't you have an encyclopedia?"

Joe did not, in fact, own an encyclopedia, though it wouldn't surprise him if the Allens had several. "Tell you what. You let me take your temperature without any complaining, and I'll pick up your encyclopedia when I head over to get lunch." Nora Allen was a godsend; he didn't know how he would have survived this ordeal if she wasn't managing the meals.

He could see that Barry's first inclination was to try to renegotiate the terms, but he closed his mouth with a huff without saying anything, no doubt realizing that arguing would qualify as complaining. Smart kid.

He tucked the digital thermometer into Barry's armpit, who squirmed and made faces, but did not, as per their agreement, complain. "If your temperature is good for the rest of the day, you can go back to school tomorrow."

"Really?" Barry bounced excitedly, incidentally pulling away from the thermometer. Joe clasped a firm hand to his shoulder to hold him in place.

"Almost done, Barry." The thermometer beeped. 98.6 "Looks good. You've had breakfast?"

Barry heaved a long-suffering sigh, " _Yes_ , Mister Officer West."

"Drink your water."

" _Yes_ , I _did_!"

"Wasn't a question." He pressed the half-filled cup into Barry's unwilling hands, "Drink up and stay hydrated."

Barry scowled ferociously under his unruly mop of hair, in even more disarray than usual since he'd been curled up under a blanket not too long ago, but he did as he was bid, his focus sliding sideways to the television. Joe followed his gaze…"What on earth is he _wearing_?"

Riveted, Barry answered, "It's the Rockin' Wig of Science."

"Is that so?"

Joe went to the kitchen to pour himself a bowl of cold cereal before returning to take a seat on the couch next to Barry, "Why is he at a laundromat?"

"That's so that he can explain static cling. This is the one about static electricity. That's when there's a build-up of electrons on an object. Also clouds. I'm not really sure how the cloud thing works. But lightning is also static electricity."

With this level of energy, and no longer contagious, Barry would almost certainly be fine to return to school tomorrow.

* * *

_Did You Know That..._

_50-100_ _lightning bolts_

_HIT **the** GROUND_

_every Second ALL_

_**over** the **EARTH.**_

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When picking an episode, I just ran a search for Bill Nye clip, and the bit with the Van der Graaf generator was the first result. The Rockin' Wig of Science suited my purposes, so I decided to run with it. Turns out, it's from the Static Electricity episode – you know, the one with the lightning ;)
> 
> Also, for those of you who are compulsive fact-checkers: yes, a chickenpox vaccine became available in the U.S. in 1995. However, this is set just two years later in 1997, and I imagine that not every child was vaccinated right away. Who knows, maybe Dr. Allen wanted to see more data.
> 
> Today, there _are_ antiviral drugs to treat the varicella-zoster virus that causes chickenpox. I started to dig deeper into timelines, looking at when aciclovir (patented in 1979) might have been applied to chickenpox...and then I decided to hand-wave it instead. So there. Dr. Allen is in a rush to get out the door, and he gives Barry a simplified answer rather than sit down and explain why, as a young child with a healthy immune system, Barry just needs to wait it out.


	6. The Best-Laid Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, at S.T.A.R. Labs, things don't always go as planned. Sometimes, things go exactly as planned, and sometimes the plans are quite silly.

Barry looked at the new apparatus set up in the Cortex of S.T.A.R. Labs dubiously. "Is this going to be like that time with the DDR machine?"

Cisco rolled his eyes, "Are you bringing that up again?"

"I just don't want a repeat of what happened."

Cisco snorted, "I think you're blowing it _way_ out of proportion." He held his thumb and forefinger a half-inch apart. "That fire was extremely small and self-contained."

" _I_ almost caught fire!"

"Your suit is flame-retardant," Cisco countered.

Exasperated, Barry threw his hands into the air, "I wasn't wearing my suit!"

Folding his arms defensively, he frowned at Barry, "Well, I don't know why you're blaming me for _that._ "

* * *

**Earlier**

Barry blinked at the bright squares of the DDR machine that now occupied one corner of the lab. "Is that - "

"This is for normalcy training." Dr. Wells explained nonsensically.

"Uh, no offense Doctor Wells, but normal people don't do DDR. Not anymore."

"Normal is boring!" Cisco called out from where he was sitting on his desk, chewing a twizzler, half-a-dozen loose wires draped over the back of his neck.

Dr. Wells moved forward, encroaching on Barry's personal space, forcing him to back up a step. "You've started lowering your guard, processing and moving at speeds _beyond_ normal human capabilities without consciously thinking about it. If you continue, you are Going. To. Slip. Up. And you are going to be found out."

Cisco cut in, hopping off the desk, "I've calibrated the machine to deduct points for responses that are too precise, while at the same time increasing its max speed to encourage you to go faster. So if you're faster than what is possible - you know, for anyone who isn't you - you'll be penalized."

"What's to stop me from just doing it really badly on purpose, then?"

Cisco grinned broadly, "I'm glad you asked! If you flub it, we get to throw popcorn at you!"

Barry stared, "What? No. That's ridiculous. Caitlin, tell him - "

There was a ding from the opposite corner of the lab. "Oh, popcorn's done!" Caitlin pulled the bag out of the microwave and shook it into a nearby bowl, "Now, get on with your training exercise." She shooed him forcibly into the corner.

"Can't I play Guitar Hero instead?" he asked, even as he turned resignedly to face the screen.

"Yeeah, shake it, Allen!" Cisco hooted.

Forty-five mortifying minutes later, as Barry _finally_ made it to 60 million points, the screen spontaneously burst into flame.

* * *

**Now:**

"This is totally different! So I forgot to increase the insulation of one of the wires when I was reconfiguring - I was in a rush. Your treadmill works fine, doesn't it? This is going to work right, too, trust me."

"Let the record show that I am extremely doubtful about the validity of this idea," Barry said, stepping into position.

* * *

**32 Minutes Later:**

"Good thing we keep plenty of fire-extinguishers handy, huh? And that hole in the ceiling will be super easy to fix, no problem at all."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dance Dance Revolution isn't any more ridiculous that Operation: Chess-pong. It might even be a little less.
> 
> As for what the new training program is, I decided to leave that to the imagination. Personally, I like to think that there's some use for a trampoline; learning to reduce airtime would be important when travelling at high speeds, since he theoretically can't accelerate downwards any faster than gravity, and every moment he's not in contact with the ground is a moment he's not pushing himself forward.


	7. Timekeeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One would think having superspeed would make a person more punctual. Too bad time is relative.

Barry skidded to a halt just out of sight before rounding the corner to greet Iris. Who was, for some reason, looking very irate.

"There you are, Barry!" Iris scolded

"What?" He blinked in surprise, "But I got here early!"

"It's ten-past six, Barry. You're late."

Barry looked back at his watch, which still insisted he was five minutes early. He checked the time on his phone, which agreed with Iris, so he carefully spun the long minute hand forward until his watch was correct again. "Sorry, sorry. I'm here now."

Fortunately, all they missed were a couple of trailers, and they made it in time for the opening credits. Unfortunately, this did not give Barry enough time to get popcorn before the movie started, so he had to leave for the concession stand fifteen minutes in, and missed a critical exchange between the lead protagonist and his future-nemesis, which made the ensuing revenge plot much harder to understand. Next time, Barry vowed, he _would_ be on time. What else was superspeed good for?

* * *

A week later, his watch was slow again. Joe was less than amused.

"Barry. You said you'd have that file on the Captain's desk by three o'clock. Do you know what time it is?"

"…my watch says it's three-oh-five."

"It's three-thirty, Barry! Now get that file, and get back down here."

Joe was extremely tolerant of Barry's tardiness due to Flash business. Heck, he even provided Barry with a cover story when necessary. However, since Barry kept him in the loop, he also knew when Barry _wasn't_ busy with metahuman stuff. Joe was of the opinion that since Barry could work so much more quickly than the average person, he should be able to meet expectations easily; Barry shared this opinion, and was still trying to work out for himself why it didn't seem to work that way for him in reality.

* * *

He had the battery changed. It didn't help. His watch continued to run slow, despite taking it to two separate watch repairmen, neither of whom could find anything wrong (it was a nice timepiece, he'd rather get it fixed than get it replaced).

He'd always had a reputation for tardiness around the bullpen, and blaming it on a slow watch was only the latest in a long line of feeble excuses, even though, in these instances, it really was true. Even Iris was getting tired of hearing the same hackneyed reason over and over.

"Barry. Your watch running slow again?" Iris looked increasingly skeptical every time he blamed it.

"Yes! I don't understand it; I've taken it to have it looked at and no one could - oh, _gedankenversuch_!"

"Uh…gesundheit?" Iris's smile quirked to one side as she raised one eyebrow.

Barry hurried to explain, " _Gedankenversuch, or g_ _edankenexperiment,_ was a term used by Einstein to describe his 'thought experiments' - though, he wasn't the one to coin the phrase - But his purely conceptual experiments would lead him to develop his theory of relativity! And -" _and special relativity might explain why my watch runs slow, relative to yours. Because the faster an object moves through space, the slower it moves through time " -_ and I have to go." _before I say something that will tip you off._

"What? Barry…"

"I just remembered - I - Just give me twenty minutes to get this one small thing done, and then I'll be right back. I promise - It's just that I just remembered...this thing that I really have to do. It's not super important, or anything, nothing to worry about, just...time sensitive." He grinned, "Yeah, it's time sensitive, and you know me, always running late - I just thought that if I left now, I could be on time for once?"

"And Einstein relates to this - how?" Both eyebrows raised, and Iris was in full skeptic-mode. Not good.

Barry opened his mouth to respond, but couldn't think of anything. Iris waited patiently, arms folded. He seized upon the first semi-coherent thought to drift through his head, "Tutoring! That's the thing I'm going to be late for, I'm helping a friend with a research paper and the topic is Einstein. And you know I'm a big fan of ol' Albert."

"You're going to be able to tutor them in less than twenty minutes?"

"Wha-? Oh, because I said I'd be back in twenty minutes. No, see, I just need to...call them, to reschedule, so I was just going to excuse myself so I could go do that. It probably won't even take a full twenty minutes."

"So let me get this straight. The time-sensitive thing you need to do right now, to leave right now for in order to be on time, is to take twenty minutes to call a friend to reschedule your tutoring session?"

"Yes." Barry insisted feebly, fully aware of Iris's disappointment, of the fact that no one would buy his story in a million years. He was aware of the fact that he didn't actually have anywhere else he needed to be (he could have stayed with Iris and hung out as planned), that he'd made that excuse in an attempt to extricate himself quickly from a sticky conversational mess, and that he'd only made it even more of a mess. "Yes," he repeated again, slump-shouldered.

Iris frowned more deeply, worry crinkling her brow, and he hated that. He'd do anything to make that go away. In fact...

"You know what, Iris? You're right. I got all caught up in my worry because I'd forgotten about it until just now, but it really shouldn't take twenty minutes to make a phone call. I'll give..." he groped for a name Iris wouldn't recognize, "Diggle a call right now."

* * *

Elsewhere, in Starling City:

Oliver Queen looked down at his phone, playing a very strange voicemail from Barry: _"Hey, Diggle, it's me. Can we reschedule that thing - that Einstein thing...paper for...uh...later? Yeah. You've got my number, call me back when you get the chance. Bye!"_

"Do you think it's a code?" Diggle asked, bemused.

"No, I don't think so. But you're welcome to call him back to ask about the Einstein thing-paper."

* * *

Tucking his phone back into his pocket, Barry wrapped one arm around Iris and steered them towards that great Mongolian grill on Market Street. If the problem with his watch was what he thought it was, then no amount of watch repair was going to fix it. Though he wished someone at S.T.A.R. Labs could have pointed out the problem sooner. In fact, hadn't Cisco said...?

* * *

"Cisco!" Barry yelled, bursting into the Cortex, "Cisco, you forgot something important!"

"What, what did I forget?"

"Remember when you said it only _looked_ like the world was slowing down, because I was moving so fast? Yeah, well, as it turns out, Einstein had a thing or two to say about the relationship between time and accelerated objects."

"My bad," Cisco shrugged sheepishly.

"You worked on a _particle accelerator_! How did it not occur to you my watch would start to fall behind?"

"Why don't you just use your phone? That gets its time from the cell towers, right?"

"That's not the point!" Inwardly, Barry wondered the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Barry's obviously not wearing the watch when he's in the suit, which is when he does most (but not all) of his speeding, and he would need to be going a _lot_ faster than Mach 1 for a _lot_ longer before the time dilation became as great as it is here. I blame it on two factors: One, the effects of time dilation are exaggerated due to Comic Book Physics, and Two: the Speed Force is probably doing something wonky. Again. (It does that)
> 
> I'm not saying that time dilation explains all of Barry's experiences in superspeed mode. It's probably only a little bit time dilation and a lot more superspeed-perception, where he's processing stimuli at a much faster rate, which the show presents to us as looking like a slow-motion video, as a visual device to illustrate his incredible speed. (Cisco's comment about time not actually slowing down serves to inform both Barry and the audience that his ability is superspeed, not time manipulation).
> 
> If you're wondering about special relativity and time dilation, I recommend searching YouTube, because I think graphic representation helps a lot when talking about objects in motion. I'm not going to try to summarize it further here, because it would be extremely difficult to do so without diagrams, and more importantly, physics is not my field of expertise, so I'd probably make a jumble of it.


	8. Ice Cream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five Times Barry's Ice Cream Melted, and One Time It Didn't

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Spitfire303, who suggested ice cream.
> 
> Takes place over a span of years, beginning in 1994 (so, warning for Nora being alive and happy at the very beginning of the fic. I don't know if that needs to be warned for. It just makes me sad.) This is pretty much nothing but ice cream, science, feels, and more ice cream.
> 
> (also, this was written back in season 1, before the West family tree was more clearly established, so to allow for a potential nephew!Wally, I hypothesized an older brother, now jossed)

* * *

**_Five Times Barry's Ice Cream Melted, and One Time it Didn't_ **

* * *

***** One *****

In the summer of 1994, Nora Allen took her five-year-old son out for ice cream after going to see _The Lion King_. Barry asked for strawberries, Snickers pieces, and caramel sauce on his sundae, and the resulting mess was considerably stickier than the ice cream would ever have managed to be on its own. Barry kept up a continuous stream of chatter, and Nora, fondly, kept reminding him to east his ice cream before it melted completely, to no avail.

It was a good thing he'd asked for it in cup, and not a cone.

* * *

***** Two *****

Rudolph "Rudy" West was home for his first summer break after starting college, and the West household, now including Barry, had gone out for ice cream to celebrate.

Barry didn't know Rudy all that well. Rudy had been a senior in high school when – when what happened happened, and he'd left for Nebraska on a football scholarship less than a year later, and Barry had not seen or heard from him since.

(Rudy equally didn't seem to know what to do with a little brother he'd never asked for, and stayed pretty aloof.)

Barry focused on his ice cream, licking silently at his cone as they walked down the boulevard. Iris was giving him funny looks every so often as she managed her own two scoops of double fudge. He supposed maybe he was being unusually quiet (Rudy tended to have that effect on him, being so much older).

Rudy was telling a story about his 'weirdo roommate,' and Barry's attention wandered away to their surroundings. He saw a stray dog snuffling in the alley up ahead. Well, he saw its head peek out for a moment, before it ducked back and was lost from sight. He looked at his ice cream, and he looked at where he'd seen the dog disappear... The sidewalk they were on went right past it; they were going to walk right by in another moment…three…two…one…He stumbled as they walked past the mouth of the alley, his strawberry-and-mint cone tumbling to the ground in a pink and green splatter. Barry tensed - would they suspect he'd dropped it on purpose?

"He's not going to start crying, is he?" Rudy remarked snidely. Maybe there was a reason Barry disliked him, beyond just not knowing what to say around him.

They'd come to a halt, everyone stopping to look at the dropped cone, at Barry - but Barry's attention was still, out of the corner of his eye, on the space between the two buildings. The dog had wiry fur, with dirty paws and ribs Barry could count even from this distance. It was crouched against the metal gate that cut the alley in half, half-hidden behind some garbage cans. It's head was up, watching the goings-on in front of the alley with an inscrutable expression. Barry kept his head down, and started to walk forward again (he didn't think it would come any closer to his ice cream while they were still there) but he bumped into Joe with a startled 'oomph!'

Joe was kneeling on the sidewalk in front of Barry, concerned; he must have brought himself to Barry's level while Barry had been focused elsewhere. "Hey, Barry, are you alright?"

"m'fine"

"Accidents happen, and when they do, we just have to pick ourselves up and keep going."

Barry squirmed; it hadn't been an accident. He wished Joe would stop talking and let them move on, he didn't like all the attention. Especially since Iris was still being sympathetic, and asking if they could go back and get Barry another cone, and that just made him feel even more awful…

"Wasn't an accident," he mumbled to his shoes.

"What?"

"I dropped it on purpose." Hoping to leave it at that, he tried to brush past Joe, but Joe put both hands on his shoulders and held him in place.

"Why would you do that, son?"

He shrugged, but at that moment the dog must have brushed up against something, because there was a loud clang from that direction as something metal - maybe a pipe - clattered to the ground. Everyone's heads turned; the jig was up.

"Oh, Barry." He heard Joe take a deep, slow breath. "You get that from your mother." Joe wrapped his arms around him, and Barry sniffled into his shoulder, and it had nothing to do with spilled ice cream, no matter what Rudy thought.

"He looked hungry. And I thought - I thought - "

" _Shh, shh, sh._ It's alright, Barry. I'm not mad. But you know, it just isn't feasible to feed all the strays you come across. And ice cream probably isn't that healthy for dogs."

"S'not healthy for people, either."

Joe laughed, and gave Barry one more tight squeeze before letting him go, "Then we'd better get a move on, so he can enjoy it before it melts."

Oddly enough, Barry was feeling better than he had before he dropped his cone. Someday much later, he'd learn the meaning of the word 'catharsis,' but this summer day, he only thought that maybe they'd go swimming later. That could be fun.

* * *

***** Three *****

"Why are you staring at your ice cream? It's going to melt." Iris had come down to the kitchen after finishing her English homework to find Barry focusing with single-minded intensity on the bowl of fudge ripple in front of him.

"That's the point." Barry went on to explain that because ice cream was so cold, it numbed the taste buds, so ice cream producers had to add extra sugar to make it taste sweet. He gestured to the science magazine in front of him, open to an article about the chemistry of ice cream, "It says that that's why melted ice cream tastes sweeter, and I wanted to know to what extent that's true."

After another minute of very little progress, Iris offered a suggestion, "Why don't you just microwave it?"

Barry shook his head, "That could introduce confounding factors. What if microwaving it affects the taste?" He paused thoughtfully, "though, that could be another experimental group. We should compare ice cream that's been melted by sitting out to ice cream melted in the microwave, see if it does make a difference."

Iris nodded thoughtfully, "Then, what if you put the bowl in a larger pot of warm water, like if you were thawing chicken in a hurry?"

"Excellent idea!" Barry bounced out of his seat and started running the tap to warm up the water. After banging about under the sink, he emerged with the pot usually used for pasta, filled it up with two inches of hot water, and brought it back to the table. Iris carefully lowered the bowl of ice cream to the bottom, keeping a watchful eye on the water level.

Then they sat back down to wait.

"So, Barry, did you finish your essay for Mrs. Hutchinson's class?"

"Ah, well, sorta. I mean, I have a rough draft, it just..."

Iris held out her hand imperiously, "Let me take a look."

"Oh, you don't have to do that," he hedged.

"You helped me with my algebra. Besides, that ice cream is at least another ten minutes from being soup."

Together, they bent over the lined paper with corrective intent. Iris hummed thoughtfully as she marked a few places that needed commas and several spelling mistakes. When she got to the second body paragraph, she began scribbling notes in the margin. "You've deviated from your topic sentence. See, here you didn't offer any evidence to - "

"Evidence?"

Iris rolled her eyes, "Yes, Barry Allen, evidence. Just because it isn't science, doesn't mean you don't have to offer support to make your point."

"Mrs. Hutchinson just goes on and on about support, I thought she just meant use logic or something. Evidence makes much more sense." She could see the light dawning in his eyes, and, impulsively, she dipped her finger in the goopy ice cream and dabbed it on his nose.

He stared at her in shock, spluttering; she laughed at his expression, "It's melted!"

And, Iris found, the melted ice cream did taste sweeter.

* * *

***** Four *****

Central City was in the middle of its worst heat wave in thirty years, but that was not going to deter the 8th Precinct's annual Fourth of July Barbecue. They'd reserved both pavilions at Gardner Park, and had been grilling non-stop since two o'clock to feed the ravenous horde of family and friends. Franklin, Central City's Fire Marshal, had stopped by a little while ago to grumble about the busy day he had ahead of him and complain about people who didn't follow fireworks zoning laws; he was bequeathed two enormous racks of ribs to take back to the firehouse, as per tradition.

Right now, Paulson was stepping up to take over the grilling from Joe, who gratefully handed over the apron and tongs, snagged his beer off the nearby table, and went to find some shade.

He found Iris sitting alone at a picnic in one of the pavilions, a plate of chips in front of her.

"Where's Barry?" he asked; a moment later his question resolved itself when the young man in question jogged up with two popsicles.

"Oh, hey, Joe! Did you want one? I could go back to the truck - " he made as if to turn around, but Joe gestured him to take a seat instead.

"Better eat the ones you have before they melt."

"Oh, uh, they're not both mine. Here's yours, Iris."

"Thanks, Barry." She unwrapped her strawberry shortcake bar with obvious delight, as Barry worked out how to best manage his grape twinpop.

"So, how does it feel, to be college sophomores?" Joe pulled a chip off of Iris's plate.

"Dad! It's summer! Classes don't start again for another two months."

"Actually," Barry grinned shyly, "I'm taking a summer course that starts next week."

"Really? What for?"

Barry's forehead wrinkled as he smiled lop-sidedly at Iris, "Do you mean, what class is it for, or, what on earth would I take a summer class for?"

"The first one, you doofus," she rolled her eyes, exasperated, "Anyone with eyes knows why you'd take a summer class."

"Oh, right, right. ... And that reason is...?"

"Because you're super-smart and you love learning?"

Barry smiled sappily at her, before he seemed to become aware of what that looked like, and he turned back to face Joe. "It's just a general chemistry course, but it's a pre-req for a lot of more advanced, specialized classes...I'm actually considering an accelerated program that would get me both my bachelor's and my master's in just five years."

Joe wasn't surprised Barry wanted to pursue an accelerated program, "What would you get your master's in?"

"Actually, I'm thinking about going into forensic science - _ohcrap!_ " The forgotten popsicle dripped messily onto the front of Barry's shirt.

" _Dammit!_ " Barry swore again, "I really liked this shirt!" Joe had certainly seen him wear it often enough. It had a single square from the Periodic Table of Elements, a bold **Ba** in the center and 'BARIUM' written beneath in smaller sans-serif font, as well as all the accompanying numbers of no-doubt scientific significance. Iris had ordered it from some site that could put any of the chemical elements on a t-shirt, hat, tote bag, water bottle...it had been for Christmas a few years ago now, as he recalled.

"Don't give up on it yet. There's still time if we act quickly. Give it to me." Joe held out his hand patiently as Barry pulled off his shirt with obvious reluctance, blushing beet red to the roots of his hair. Iris remained oblivious. _That boy_ … Joe had resigned himself ages ago to a strict non-interference policy, but some days really tested his resolve.

"But what'll I wear?" Barry had his arms crossed self-consciously in front of him, and Joe had to admit that while Barry was hardly the only one to be shirtless, the other guys were all of a definite...type, that Barry was not.

"Go see if Chyre has any surplus shirts that will fit you. We're going to give away D.A.R.E. shirts to the kids who participate in the three-legged race. He might have an extra large one that will fit you."

"Joe, those are kids' shirts, I don't think..."

"Your choice. You can put this one on again and hope it doesn't stain, or you can stand proud as an example to the children of our community of the importance of drug abuse resistance."

"These aren't children of the community, these are cops' kids..." Barry grumbled, but he uncrossed his arms and stood up from the table.

"Last I saw Chyre, he was playing badminton."

Barry hurried off to where the nets were set up, and Joe set to work blotting the stain with some icewater scooped from a cooler.

After several moments of watching him work, Iris asked, "Dad. Don't you also have adult t-shirt prizes for the pie-eating contest?"

"And Barry can have one, _if_ he wins the pie-eating contest. But there's no way he's beating me, so it's a moot point." Joe dabbed carefully at the stain with a piece of lemon he'd fished out of the lemonade jug.

Iris looked in the direction Barry had disappeared, "I'll get him another ice cream just the same, cheer him up. Maybe something in a cup."

"Good thinking, Iris. Spoil his appetite." The purple was already quite faded. If they threw it in the wash as soon as they got home, there shouldn't be a problem.

Iris punched him lightly on the shoulder, "Dad, you shouldn't tease him so much."

"I'm a father, we're at a barbecue; it's my prerogative to tease."

In the end, neither of them won the pie-eating contest, and the prize was awarded to Officer Parkman from traffic control. Still, Joe thought as he leaned back in his lawn chair later that evening, sitting with Iris on one side and Barry on the other, overall it was a pretty great day. Yeah, a pretty damn good day, he thought, as pinwheels of color exploded overhead.

* * *

***** Five *****

Barry had told Iris that he'd been at his apartment when the power went out, eating up his ice cream before it melted. This was a lie - he'd been fighting a meta-human, and now his ice cream was a soupy mess. He gazed forlornly at what had once been a tub of Neapolitan. The stripes had all run together into an unappetizing flesh-colored goop - if he refroze it, it wouldn't be as creamy, since he had a crappy freezer whose slow freeze time would allow large ice crystals to form. Unless...he could maybe borrow some liquid nitrogen from S.T.A.R. Labs. That could work. (still wouldn't sort out the chocolate from the strawberry. Damn.)

* * *

**+1**

"That has got to be the largest ice cream I've ever seen." Barry's massive black cherry waffle cone easily dwarfed Joe's (much more reasonable) strawberry with chocolate sprinkles in a sugar cone.

"This? _pffftt_. There's this place in Farson, Wyoming, that stacks their cones up to here." He held the hand not holding the cone another two inches above his already towering giant.

"What were you doing in Wyoming?" Joe worked methodically to keep any ice cream from dribbling down to his fingers.

"I got hungry coming back from Starling City." Barry then blurred as he devoured his cone in less than three seconds. "ARRGH!" He clutched both hands to his head.

"Barry! Barry! What's wrong?!" But even before he finished asking, Barry was smiling again, no worse for the wear.

"Brain freeze! I ate too quickly," he laughed it off.

"I thought, your metabolism..."

"Actually, brain freeze is the result of a vascular mechanism, not a metabolic process - cold-constricted blood vessels in the mouth rebound as they warm up, and the fifth nerve sends a pain signal to the brain, which didn't evolve to deal with ice cream and interprets it as a headache." He shrugged, a casual 'what can you do about it?' gesture. "I can just get over it much faster."

Reassured, Joe returned to leisurely licking his ice cream, "Was it worth it? Because now you're all out of ice cream."

Barry zipped away, and returned with a second, equally large cone. Chocolate-chip cookie dough, this time, and as they walked side-by-side towards downtown, Barry consumed it at a more normal rate. Joe was determined not to feel jealous of the amount of dessert Barry could consume with impunity.


	9. Lab Assistant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe's thoughts on Barry's position in the Central City Police Department.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set just a few months pre-series, before Barry's first trip to Starling. Joe's POV

Detective Joe West sighed as he pulled forward the topmost file in his intake tray. He flipped it open to see it was the toxicology results he'd asked for, for the Mulligan case. His forehead creased when he saw Dr. Elias Snodgrass's name on the report; he'd have to give it to Barry, unobtrusively, for a second opinion.

Dr. Elias Snodgrass was CCPD's senior forensic scientist, who had been with the department for over fifty years, and whose work had helped close a number of high-profile cases. Back in his heyday (which was something like _thirty years ago_ ), he'd been a very well-renowned, well-respected forensic scientist, who had made, as Joe understood it, a number of important contributions to the field. But today, he relied more on his reputation than his work ethic, and his reports had gotten increasingly slipshod of late, according to Barry.

There wasn't much anyone could do about it - Dr. Snodgrass's reputation shielded him from censure (after all, what would a _detective_ like Joe know about whether the spectrometer results were analyzed correctly?) - and he'd been with the department so long, he was practically a permanent fixture.

There was also the matter of his family connections. In the early nineteen-hundreds, before the market crashed, the Central City Police Department had received a generous endowment from the daughter of a police commissioner, who'd married into money - Elias Snodgrass's mother. As a result, CCPD had a pretty swanky headquarters, and a less-competent senior scientist that they just couldn't get rid of.

So for the time being, as most people waited for him to retire (had _been_ waiting, for about fifteen years), Joe compensated by giving Snodgrass's finished reports to Barry for a second opinion. The rest of the department, following Joe's lead, treated Barry as the _de facto_ lead scientist, despite the fact that he was only an assistant. Further confusing matters, especially to incoming rookie cops, was the fact that Barry had a lab to himself on the top floor, while Dr. Snodgrass and his other assistants shared lab space on the floor below.

But the reason for that didn't have anything to do with seniority. That auxiliary lab, which received the more outdated equipment whenever the main lab got upgrades, was given over to Barry when the other lab folks issued complaints about him running experiments in his spare time. This way, Barry was free to dabble to his heart's content, without getting in anyone's way (always a good thing, Joe thought with relief, remembering a time when Barry had tried to conduct those sorts of experiments in the house).

Joe closed the file and dropped it onto his desk, his mind now fully preoccupied with thoughts of Barry and his position in the CCPD. On the one hand, Joe was proud that Barry had decided to go into law enforcement, to put his talents towards serving his community, and was profoundly relieved that he'd done it by going the science route, rather than trying to join the police academy like Iris had. However, he was increasingly convinced that rather than making the decision in order to follow in Joe's footsteps, or out of a burning desire to process fingerprints, Barry had chosen his current profession out of a misguided, quixotic crusade to exonerate his rightfully-convicted father.

And Joe just didn't know whether it would be better to confront him about it, or let him get on with his work. Chronic tardiness aside, Barry did good work at CCPD, and he was likely to replace Snodgrass when he finally retired, despite his young age. The Department certainly needed him. And yet, Joe was not as firm in his certainty that _Barry_ needed the _Department_.

Barry was talented, and could do anything he set his mind to. It had confused Joe, at the time, how Barry had hurried to get a job in forensics as fast as he possibly could, and had never once raised the question of possibly taking the time to pursue a Ph.D., or applying for a purely-research position at a different lab, where his peers would share his passion for science and _understand_ him. Which wasn't to say that Barry was a poor fit for CCPD; Barry was doing great things as a forensic scientist. He helped a lot of people, and his work made the streets of Central City a safer place. But sometimes Joe wondered if he could be doing more, applying himself to studies that would further all of society. He had the brains for it, and he had the heart. He was just too damn preoccupied with his vendetta against an imaginary man in a ball of lightning, chasing the impossible.

Joe leaned back in his chair and rubbed at the creases entrenched in his forehead. Coffee. He needed coffee. He'd refill his mug, and get back to working productively on his paperwork. After all, _professionally_ , Barry's motivations shouldn't matter, so long as it wasn't impacting his work ethic (which was still much better than Snodgrass's, and _why_ couldn't they force his retirement, _why?_ ). However, _personally_ , as a father... Joe sighed again, setting the matter aside; he needed more time to figure out what it was he wanted to say to Barry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My attempt to explain the complete lack of anyone else in CCPD's forensic lab, even though it was once emphasized by Oliver that he's only a lab _assistant_.
> 
> I grabbed the name 'Snodgrass' from one of Samuel L. Clemens's less famous pseudonyms, Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass III. No particular connection to the story (this time), I just really like Mark Twain.


	10. Parole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry struggles to adjust to life on the Outside, and finds nothing so hard to navigate as interpersonal relationships.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for a prompt by RedHatMeg
> 
> Henry POV. One-shot that takes place in hypothetical future two years down the line where he's out of Iron Heights (paroled, but not yet exonerated)
> 
> Note: Thus far, we have yet to see a meta-human confrontation be resolved with due process. Therefore, 'catching his mother's killer' and 'releasing his father from prison' might not go hand-in-hand, if, in the catching of said killer, they don't also obtain admissible evidence. This story is built on the premise that enough evidence was brought forward to cast doubt on Henry's conviction and allow him a meeting with the parole board. Parole was granted, and Barry and Joe are still working on getting his conviction overturned.

Henry dropped his keys into the re-purposed ash tray on the corner table and pushed the door closed behind him with one foot. The light of a passing car swept through his apartment, illuminating every shabby, empty inch of it in slow motion.

He dropped onto the couch with a sigh, one of only two pieces of furniture in the room besides the corner table, the other being a comparatively nice dark-stained oak bookcase that was rather too large for the room, and made the space seem even smaller by comparison. The radiator started hissing - whether in greeting or complaint he didn't know - but he ignored it.

Back in Iron Heights, his lawyer had asked him if he'd have a place to live if he was paroled, that the parole board would look on him more favorably if he did - and he'd said that he was going to live with his son, Barry, who'd made room in his apartment. His lawyer, a mousey man with thick glasses who smelled like candy corn, had frowned very slightly, just the corners of his mouth, and hemmed and hawed; he had seemed to be working himself up to disagree. After almost two minutes of not-quite-frowning he'd managed to express his opinion that, given the matter for which he was convicted, moving in with the son of the deceased - who was Henry's  _wife, godammit,_ she was Nora, and  _he'd loved her -_ might not be the best approach. Henry had said he'd take that under advisement, and asked him to leave.  _Now._

As it turned out, not many places were willing to rent to a convicted murderer. Joe had finally found him an apartment, not far from the precinct, which was convenient since he was expected to meet with his parole officer there once a week.

His lawyer had also asked if he had any gainful employment waiting for him. He said he'd have a position at S.T.A.R. Labs. The man had frowned a bit again at that, but Henry had cut him off before he could articulate whatever it was he found objectionable this time. "I know their reputation hasn't been that great since the explosion. But they're a research lab. Even if my license to practice hadn't been revoked, I doubt I'd be able to attract very many patients."

His lawyer had tried to agree as diplomatically as possible that this was very true.

In the here and now, a police siren started up outside. Living just a few blocks from the precinct, he always heard the squad cars whenever they left in a hurry, at all hours of the night. Fortunately, patrol cars in the field were more often the closest responders, or else the disruptions would be even more frequent.

Tomorrow was Wednesday. He'd be making his weekly visit to the precinct, to be asked intrusive questions about how he was adjusting, what he was doing, who he was spending time with, where did he go.

He was finally Out, why would he want to be anywhere except where Barry was?

* * *

Henry had been Outside for a little over a month, and this would be his fourth meeting with Officer Montoya. He'd only run into Joe on one of those occasions - his first visit. It had been...different than Henry had expected.

(He could get along with Joe just fine if they were alone, and he did see Joe fairly often. The man was, after all, working hard to get his conviction overturned. They had been friends, once. Nowadays they met for coffee, sometimes, to talk about how Henry's case was going, or to talk about Barry. There were things that sons did not tell their fathers, that must be observed to be known, and Henry ached to know  _everything_.

Sometimes, they talked about life's minutia. 'Matters of Consequence', Nora would have called it, mock-derisively with a twinkle in her eye; The Little Prince had been her favorite book, and Henry had treasured the beat-up, water-stained copy he'd found tucked in one corner of Iron Heights' library - " _In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence… I would bring myself down to their level. I would talk to them about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-ups would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man."_

( Henry knew that, sometimes, when she was  _supposed_  to be tucking Barry into bed, she had instead set up the telescope, and they'd stayed up well past his bedtime, giggling and whispering as they pretended to search for Asteroid B-612 )

So Henry spoke with Joe about Matters of Consequence: politics and sports and even, once, Joe's neckties, which had caused Henry to laugh until he was wracked with sobs, much to Joe's alarm. Henry had already grieved for Nora, and while he knew he'd never really  _stop_ , the first ten years had done their best to blunt the pain. But now that he was Out, he saw Nora in her favorite bookstore, in the children's center she raised money for, in the puddles after a rainy day she would have encouraged Barry to jump in. He'd cried tears of joy to be with Barry again, but that day he found himself weeping for the first time in five years.

It was a pain Joe understood, and in that shared understanding, Henry didn't mind so much to be crying salty tears into his coffee.

All said, Henry got along with Joe just fine.)

However, at that first visit to his parole officer a month ago, when Joe had come to greet him at the door and point him in the right direction, Henry had learned something important. At the precinct, he wasn't Joe; he was Officer West. Henry didn't much like Officer West. Officer West had once stood by while his hands were cuffed behind his back. He found it hard to trust Officer West.

That first time, he'd walked in the door, and seen Joe standing there, and seen the badge clipped to his belt, and the way he stood, the way others deferred to him, and a switch had flipped in his brain. It was a switch he hadn't even been aware he had (there were other switches he  _was_  aware of, that he kept a careful eye on, so that he could run errands to the corner store without seeing contraband everywhere). Officer West had greeted him warmly, and he'd stared, and hadn't said anything. Not one word.

He wasn't sure what Officer West thought of his behavior. He knew Joe would probably think he'd been nervous about his upcoming meeting. Thus far, he'd managed to avoid encountering Officer West on his subsequent trips to the precinct. (He hadn't told his therapist about this particular habit of compartmentalization. He wasn't sure why he needed a therapist, since his parole officer loved to ask really invasive personal questions anyway, and why should he have to repeat himself?)

It just figured his luck would run out today.

Because when he walked into the precinct at two-thirty on Wednesday for his fourth parole meeting and saw Barry in an animated conversation with Officer West, his first irrational thought was to  _get Barry away from him_. Then he realized Barry was smiling, was  _laughing_ , and he very nearly turned on his heal and walked out. Except, he had an appointment he couldn't afford to miss. And now Barry had caught sight of him and was waving him over.

So he walked over.

And he told himself, repeatedly, that this was Joe, who'd been instrumental to getting him Out, with whom he, Barry, and Iris had shared Chinese take-out just last night.

An officer behind Joe frowned as Henry walked over, and leaned down to whisper in the ear of her partner, who looked up at Henry and didn't even try to hide his obvious distaste.

Henry's walk faltered, but Barry didn't seem to notice as he came bounding up to Henry for a tight embrace - he was an inch taller than Henry now, and had to tuck his head down to rest his forehead on Henry's shoulder. Henry gripped him back just as tightly, burying one hand in his hair as the other clutched at his back, bunching the fabric of his jacket. Over a month on the Outside, and they were still incapable of greeting each other any other way.

Eventually, they pulled apart, and Officer West - no, he'd made Detective - no, he was  _Joe_  - stepped forward.

"Henry! I missed you the past few weeks. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were avoiding me."

Henry didn't have anything to say to that, and Detective West's genial smile slipped. It would have been better if Henry could have laughed it off. Now Barry was looking at him with concern, and Henry found he couldn't meet anyone's eyes.

He didn't even knew how to respond when Detective West called him 'Henry.' Joe had hardly ever called him 'Henry,' Before. He'd mostly called him 'Allen,' a holdover of his profession. (The fact that his surname worked just as well as a given name made it seem all the more natural). When the heck has he started calling him 'Henry'? After he'd been sent to prison, he thought. It made no sense. Why would he change it? Was it a guilt thing? Henry didn't know.

"I'm going to be late." Henry said. (He was five minutes early), "I'll see you around."

* * *

The meeting went about as well as he'd expected. It wasn't appreciably different than the week before, or the week before that, but this time he was, perhaps, a little bit more snappish than Montoya deserved. He couldn't help it; his thoughts were a jumbled mess going into the meeting, and they weren't any less jumbled coming out.

When he stepped out, he saw Barry waiting for him. This was a marked improvement in his day.

Barry grinned broadly at him, but his brow was furrowed with concern. "Hey, are you hungry? I'm hungry. There's a place nearby, Tito's, best burritos in the city. It's an easy walking distance." Barry paused, thoughtfully, his eyes turned skyward as though reassessing the distance. "Yeah, easy walking distance," he confirmed. Walking distance was important when neither of them had a car.

"Sounds great. Been awhile since I had a good burrito." He found himself saying that a lot - ' awhile' was a nice euphemism for 'sixteen years.'

Though their strides were matched in length, Barry's was much quicker, and he had to devote considerable attention to slowing down; that was probably why he didn't notice the way mothers pulled their children away from Henry, or the way anyone who caught his face gave him a wide berth. (His release from Iron Heights had made the news, after all). Henry was getting used to it, and he was learning to ignore the suspicion that the waitresses at the diner spat in his coffee every morning. Maybe he'd have better luck at some yuppie chain but he  _liked_ diner coffee, black as anything and uncomplicated.

Tito's did have very good burritos; Barry ordered seven, with extra guacamole and cheese. Their server didn't even bat an eye - Barry was clearly a regular.

As Barry scooped up the last dregs of fried rice with his fork, he tentatively broached the topic that had clearly been weighing on his mind. "Is...is everything alright between you and Joe?"

"Hm? Yeah, sure, why wouldn't it be? We get coffee once or twice a week, swap stories. He refuses to tell me any truly embarrassing stories about you. Don't worry, though; I'll wear him down."

Barry continued to scrape his fork across his plate restlessly, even though there wasn't a single grain left on it. "I just...I guess I...Look, there's something I've been wanting to tell you."

He took a deep breath, "Lots of kids have both a dad and a step-dad. There's no reason for you to be…threatened, or jealous, or whatever it is that has you acting, acting…"

As Barry fumbled for words, Henry was suddenly, inexhaustibly grateful that Barry had come to visit him in Iron Heights that day, against his wishes, and had continued to visit. It meant that the young man in front of him today was not a stranger to him. He didn't think he could have endured hearing those words from a stranger, under the circumstances.

"It's not that, Barry." Not entirely. "I get how, from your point of view, there isn't a...a... _conflict of interest_ in having more than one father in your life. But I just know that I haven't  _been_  a part of your life, and - "

"No, Dad," Barry rushed to reassure, "You were there for me. You were always there for me. Just because you weren't  _present_ , doesn't mean you weren't there. Please, just, talk to Joe."

"I do talk to Joe. Once or twice a week, over coffee."

"When was the last time you two went out for a beer?" Barry pointed out astutely.

"Ah...it's been awhile." Awhile: sixteen years, give or take.

Barry narrowed his eyes. His son could be shrewd, when the mood took him. "Meet him after work on Friday, invite him for a drink."

Henry restlessly shredded his paper napkin between his fingers, "It's not that easy, son."

" _Please._ "

As if Henry had a choice, now.

* * *

Friday evening, Henry stood outside the precinct's heavy doors, waiting. He kept weighing up all the reasons this was a terrible idea and concluding he should get out while he still could. He would continue seeing Joe for coffee and never deal with the Detective if he could help it. That is exactly what he would do.

He shifted his weight, almost resolved to leave (there was still the matter of what Barry would say to work out), when the doors in front of him opened.

"Want to go get a drink?" Henry blurted as soon as he saw Detec -saw  _Joe_. It came out more confrontational than he intended, but Joe only gave him a long look, a shrug, and a recommendation for an Irish pub two blocks down.

They walked in silence, and Henry tried  _really hard_  to ignore the badge still clipped to West's belt. This time, Joe couldn't possibly miss the tension between them, but he graciously waited until they were seated with their drinks before speaking, "Henry, is everything -"

"Could you - could you please call me 'Allen'?" Detective -  _no, Joe. Joe_ blinked in surprise, and Henry fidgeted, poking at his coaster. "It's just - I'm trying to reconcile. You-who-I-went-fishing-with and you-who-is-a-cop. It's why, when things are all informal between us, things seem fine, but then you go into work to do your job, and I just - " he gestured helplessly, unable to articulate.

"How is calling you 'Allen' going to help?" Joe...didn't sound disbelieving. He wasn't being sarcastic, he was just trying to work through Henry's thought process.  _Well, good luck with that_. Henry huffed a silent laugh,  _I'm still working it out myself._

"Let's be honest; you hardly ever used to call me 'Henry' anyway. Only when you wanted something, and felt bad for asking."

"When I was trying to be  _sincere,"_ Joe corrected.

"Yeah, when you sincerely wanted a favor." He was joking; he hoped Joe could tell. "And...it will break down the wall between  _Joe_ and  _Officer -_  sorry,  _Detective -_ West. So maybe you'll be one person in my head again."

Joe pursed his lips. Henry hoped his follow-up question wasn't an inquiry into Henry's mental health. He knew he had issues; he was working through them. One at a time.

But Joe didn't ask, and instead took a long pull from his lager, before saying, "So, in your head, I'm just 'that guy you went fishing with'?" He raised his eyebrows, "I don't know whether I should be insulted or not, Allen."

Henry relaxed. "Do you know how long it's been," Henry drawled, "since I last went trout-fishing?"

Joe's lips twitched as though unsure whether to smile or not, "Sixteen years?"

Henry shook his head, "Nope. Longer than that. Closer to twenty - autumn of '97."

Joe nodded thoughtfully, "I remember that. That was the time after we tried taking the kids out."

It had been clear from the get-go that neither Iris nor Barry had had the patience, the temperament to really enjoy fishing. However, that hadn't stopped them from begging incessantly to be allowed to join in on Henry and Joe's annual trip to Little Piney Creek, despite being warned repeatedly that they would find it boring. In the summer of '96 Henry and Joe finally capitulated, and the kids, outfitted with child-sized fishing poles and liberally doused with bug-spray, had learned that their fathers were right all along (an invaluable life lesson).

"Kids are older now. Do you think they'd want to give it another go?" Henry mused into his drink.

Joe snorted, "Not unless the fish in question were being controlled by some meta-human."

Henry quirked his eyebrow, "So you heard about that guy in Crescent Shore?"

"Mm-hmm. Still doesn't make the top ten weirdest crazy I've seen."

Henry took another long drink, feeling the knot of tension between his shoulder's ease. He thought he could get used to this again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently, I am incapable of not doing research, which is why I learned that the national registry of exonerations keeps track of every known exoneration in the United States since 1989. I was curious what sort of evidence they'd need to get Henry exonerated, and decided that parole was more likely, at least to start (also, Rule of Drama). That being said, this is a highly fictionalized account and not meant to be an accurate portrayal of the criminal correction system.
> 
> As an aside note, the trend has long been that parole boards would rule against those who insisted they were innocent, on the assumption that such people were in denial, (which makes me think of Arthur Miller's _The Crucible_ ). This trend is starting to change, in response to the number of wrongful convictions coming to light - good news for Henry Allen.
> 
> For those of you who might have found it improbable that Henry had such a large chunk of text memorized: There is a lot of rote memorization required of being a med student, and Henry has had sixteen years to re-re-read a story that is quite short to begin with (100 pages, give or take, and quite small ones at that). I hope I am not stretching the bounds of credulity by supposing he has large swathes of The Little Prince memorized. Especially since the passage quoted above is relatively close to the beginning.
> 
> Lastly, a nod to one version of Aquaman's origin story, in which he's given the name "Aquaman" by The Flash (Barry Allen) after helping catch Trickster in Crescent Shore - _Aquaman: Time and Tide #2_


	11. Prom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry couldn't do suave; he knew this without even trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One-sided Barry/Iris introspection
> 
> Set pre-series, senior year of high school. Barry POV

This year's prom theme was James Bond, as in double-0-seven, as in 2007. Barry predicted that it would be full of guys trying to be suave, and some of them might even succeed. Barry couldn't do suave; he knew this without even trying. On a good day, he might manage what Iris called 'adorkable,' but he didn't think that would be a big selling point so far as getting a date to prom was concerned. Especially not with everybody else doing suave.

He just couldn't get excited about senior prom the way he knew he should be, the way Iris was over being asked to the dance by Virgil Hawkins, and it wasn't just because he had two left feet on the dance floor. It wasn't even that it was less than two weeks away and he still didn't have a date. (He supposed could go stag with a group of friends, but that would require him to have, y'know, a group friends, and not just scattered, assorted lab partners.)

No, he knew perfectly well why he wasn't thrilled about prom, and it rhymed with "uninvited glove."

This was supposed to be his year!

After  _very nearly_  getting up the guts to ask Iris to junior prom, Barry had been  _so sure_  he'd be ready to ask her to senior prom. It  _had_  to be this year, because after this they graduated, and then they'd be off to different colleges. Barry had been going to do it. He'd been all set to ask Iris. It was going to change  _everything_.

He'd been mentally preparing since  _January_ , and yet when the date was announced a little over two months ago, he'd promptly fallen into a completely dysfunctional state for the rest of the week. He'd been so caught up in trying to figure out how to ask Iris, he'd repeatedly walked into doorways (and, once, a wall), tried to put his shirts on backwards or inside out almost daily (and tripped several times trying to put on his pants), eaten cereal with a fork (and Joe had given him a Look at that one. In fact, he'd been giving Barry Looks for most of that week) - the list went on and on. By the weekend, he'd finally gotten his head on straight... which hadn't meant he'd been  _ready_  to ask Iris, just that he was no longer at risk of misspelling his name on homework assignments.

In hindsight, Barry wished wished  _wished_ he'd been able to bring himself to ask Iris then. Because it wasn't long after that that Iris had met him in the hallway, beaming, catching him off guard - (he'd still been trying to figure out how to convert the stored potential energy of all his bottled-up feelings into kinetic energy that would propel him to Iris and give him the words he needed) - and she said that  _Virgil Hawkins had asked her to prom!_ Virgil may have been captain of the debate team and senior class president, but Barry bet he could probably do suave. He could probably do suave really well.

In the present, Barry thumped his head against his locker, indulging in a brief bout of jealousy, before he had to shelve it away along with his Calc II textbook. He didn't  _want_  to be jealous; envy was such a petty emotion. He wanted to be better than that - but that didn't stop the tight, roiling feeling in his chest whenever he thought about them together. He felt a little bit sick, and a lot emotional (what emotions, exactly, he couldn't find names for). In fact, it felt a bit like being constantly on the verge of crying, but Barry also knew that if he sat down and let go and actually tried to cry, nothing would happen. Except maybe a stomach ache. (It was a really confusing feeling). If this was being in love, he didn't want it.

With his forehead pressed against the cold metal of his locker, Barry focused on letting go of all the feelings he'd just dredged up. Time to be the bigger man, time to put pettiness behind him, time – time to go to lunch. He opened his locker, dropped off the textbooks he didn't need anymore, and picked up his bagged lunch. And if he slammed his locker door with more force than strictly necessary, well, who could blame him?

Maybe he just wouldn't go to prom at all.

* * *

Once he was seated at their usual lunch table, however, Barry found that all the emotions threatening to explode out of him had reduced to a dull simmer (he'd had a lot of practice, and a lot of reason to get very, very good at it). Iris sat across from him, Virgil nowhere in sight, and asked him how he was doing. She was smiling at him as she unwrapped her sandwich, and he smiled back and responded, thankful that nothing had to change. The more he thought about it, considering it from all angles, the more he realized it was probably for the best that Virgil-Probably-Suave-Hawkins had beaten him to the punch. It meant that things didn't have to change. They could remain as they were, best friends, and for the time being things did not have to become awkward or uncomfortable between them. Because there were so, so many ways admitting his feelings could go horribly wrong, and he was having trouble envisioning what set of circumstances could allow it to go horribly right.

More than that, Barry was almost entirely sure Iris was The One. She was going to be It, and that put a level of finality, a weight of gravitas, to the prospect of asking her out, that made the task even more daunting. Because after – After – he wouldn't be a teenager with a crush anymore; he'd be dating the person he hoped to spend the rest of his life with. And he could barely wrap his head around the magnitude of what that would mean.

(Also, Joe would give him a shovel-speech to end all shovel-speeches, and then, because Joe was a man of his word who was also eminently practical and didn't believe in procrastinating, Joe would then enact said shoveling right there and then as being the most expedient. And because he was a cop, they would never find the body.)

So Barry kept quiet.

And it really wasn't so bad, since it gave him these moments, just the two of them. Telling jokes or offering a sympathetic ear; talking comfortably, looking out for each other, and never doubting that the other would always be there. It filled Barry with all the best, brightest bits of being in love, and, for now, he was content.


	12. Cisco Answers the Phone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Exactly What it Says on the Tin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a blink-and-you'll-miss it moment in some early episode (I forget which one), where Cisco returns Barry's phone to him when he gets back from patrol. And thus this ficlet was born.

Cisco was expecting a call from his grandmother, so when his phone rang as he was sitting down to lunch, he answered without thinking. " _Beuno_ ,  _Abuela_."

"...Cisco, is that you?" Iris's voice - definitely NOT his nana's - shocked him like a fish-slap to the face.

He fumbled his sandwich, losing a slice of tomato and some olives despite his recovery, "Hey, Iris, uh...I think you have the wrong number." Inwardly he cringed - because, no duh,  _she_  had the right number and  _he_  had the wrong phone. Across the lab, Caitlin had looked up at his mention of Iris's name, alarmed, before she saw him on Barry's phone. oh geeze, now she was coming over...

"I have Barry's number on speed-dial. I don't have yours. I find it highly improbable I could have dialed your number by mistake." Iris was most definitely unimpressed. "What are you doing with Barry's phone? Is he there? Can I speak to him?"

"Barry can't come to the phone right now, but he'll get back to you as soon as he can." Cisco ended the call in a rush, ignoring Iris's tinny protest. He dropped the phone onto the table, where it immediately started buzzing.

Caitlin was quite fearsome when her ire was roused. "What was  _that?_  What do you think you were doing?! Don't answer that - you weren't thinking.  _Why_  weren't you thinking? Is it such an unreasonable assumption that people hired by S.T.A.R. Labs would be able to think!"

Just as her tirade was building up steam, Cisco's phone went off - his own phone this time. "I realllly have to take this call - It's my grandmother, she's expecting me to pick up..." He tried to edge away, but Caitlin crossed her arms and  _glared_ , and  _wow_ , Caitlin could give his grandmother a run for her money, glare-wise.

Barry's phone continued its near-relentless buzzing on the table, in counter-point to Cisco's own phone (and oh, that was going to come back to bite him). Confidently, Caitlin snatched up Barry's phone and answered it one-handed, "Hello Iris, this is Doctor Snow. Yes, Barry forgot his phone at S.T.A.R. Labs when he was visiting Doctor Wells. If you see him, could you please tell him where it is? He's probably looking for it, if he's even realized it's missing." a pause, "You are quite welcome. Have a good day." All the while she was talking congenially with Iris, she was leveling an expression at Cisco that said, quite clearly,  _you-see-how-it's-done?-It's-not-that-complicated._  (Cisco's phone stopped buzzing. Maybe if he called her back before she tried calling again, Nana wouldn't feel snubbed?)

Caitlin hung up, and oh crap she was crossing her arms forbiddingly again.

Leaping out of his chair, he waved his phone over his head as he ran out of the lab. "Family emergency!" He hollered over his shoulder. Close enough to the truth.

Today just wasn't his day.


	13. Impossible Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Starling City wasn't Barry's first stop in his search for the impossible. Two years prior, his quest took him to Glastonbury, CT, where he bumped into a most unusual stranger. Crossover with BBC's 'Merlin' (no knowledge necessary)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merlin crossover, Barry POV
> 
> set pre-series, spring of 2012
> 
> (There's notes at the end, but my original notes exceeded the character limit and had to be trimmed down - you can see the complete notes on [fanfiction.net](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10775062/13/Inertia). Before I scare anyone off, it's just trivia; this chapter isn't so convoluted it needs a textbrick to be understood)

The early spring air was bitterly cold against Barry's exposed face, his ungloved hands cupped around a mercifully-still-warm cup of coffee. He shifted the half-empty cup to one hand so he could reach over to adjust the strap of his messenger bag, hitching it higher on his shoulder. He was on Spring Break – his last Spring Break before graduation – and he was spending it travelling around New England, tracking down leads on the strange and impossible. The Bridgewater Triangle had been a huge bust (he should have known better, really; once a place gained a reputation as a paranormal hotspot, the number of attention-seeking claims went through the roof). At the moment, he was in Glastonbury, Connecticut, trying to track down witnesses to the reported incident two weeks ago. Ducking his head against a sudden headwind, he fished around in his pocket for the article printout –

"Ooph!"

"Yowch!" Barry jerked back, hot coffee dripping down his hand, his dropped cup splattering on the sidewalk. Miraculously, the spilled drink had managed to avoid his clothes entirely.

"Oh, oh, I'm so sorry!" the guy who'd bumped into him effused. "I wasn't watching where I was going - such a clumsy dollop-head I am today. Are you alright?"

The young man - just few years older than Barry and  _maybe_  two inches shorter - had some sort of British accent (which was, Barry knew, a very broad generalization, but if pressed all he could say was that the guy sounded more like Martin Freeman than David Attenborough).

"Ye-yeah, I'm fine." Barry shook drips of coffee from his hand, "More surprised than hurt, really."

"Brilliant!" The stranger was grinning ear-to-ear (and with ears like that, that was really saying something). Then, his face abruptly fell, and it was the picture of abject misery, "Oh, but - your coffee! Please, let me buy you another. I know a great place just around the corner."

"That really isn't necessa -"

"I insist." Well, if he insisted, who was Barry to argue?

It wasn't as though he had anywhere in particular he needed to be. He'd just come from a very disappointing visit with one of the park rangers at Meshomasic State Forest, who hadn't had anything to say about the reports of strange flashes of light in the area. Barry had just been in search of a wi-fi hotspot, to see if he could track down any other names from the article. "Alright then."

"My name's Merlin." His grin restored, he held out his hand and shook Barry's enthusiastically.

"Merlin, as in - "

"As in the legendary wizard, yes. You know, Arthur was a legendary king and no one thinks  _his_  name is strange."

"One of the perks of royalty, I suppose." Barry found himself grinning broadly as well, "If it makes you feel better, my full name is Bartholomew. Like the pirate." His smile dropped off his face as he hurried to add, tripping over his words in his rush "But, not that I was named after the pirate, obviously. I had a great-uncle…"

"Ah, say no more," Merlin nodded in understanding. "So, do you go by Bart, or Bartie, or I suppose even Artie…" He also had yet to let go of Barry's hand, but Barry found he didn't mind so much; Merlin's enthusiasm was just that contagious.

"Barry."

Delighted, Merlin's eyes twinkled, "Like the author!"

"Yes - wait, no. Yes, but spelled with a 'Y,' like Chu Berry…but then also with an 'A' instead of an 'E'…" He wondered if, now that they were both more-or-less introduced, Merlin would stop shaking his hand. He gave it an experimental tug and it came free, and if Merlin noticed anything unusual about the length of the handshake, he didn't draw attention to it.

"You like jazz?" Merlin turned to lead the way, tugging his dove-gray coat closer around himself. Barry was surprised. He hadn't met many Millenials who recognized the name (which, in hindsight, made it a poor choice for comparison).

"My…" it had been a while since he'd had to explain his relationship to Joe to anyone, "foster-dad is a huge fan. He once saw Cab Calloway perform live." Needless to say, Barry had gotten a  _very_  thorough education into the finer points of jazz – especially big band and swing - from a very young age.

"That's one of the things I love about America. Birthplace of jazz. One of your greatest contributions to the world at large. Creative process incarnate! That spontaneity that catches a single, fleeting moment in time, so that it resonates with all who hear it. Ah, and what a time that was, all the cats decked in their glad rags, dancing 'til they couldn't dance any more." He stared into the middle distance as he rhapsodized about the glories of the Jazz Age. "That Cab Calloway was a real live wire – a real Oliver Twist, who could lay down the scat like nobody else, get the whole club hopping. Nearly nobody else," he amended, "Ella Fitzgerald was in a class of her own. D'you like scat?"

Barry shrugged, indifferent; Joe would be better equipped to have this conversation. Merlin hummed a bouncy tune, skipping a little as he walked. They made a right at the next intersection, and then, abruptly, Merlin spoke again, "In heraldry, a field with an even number of horizontal stripes is called barry."

Barry blinked at the non-sequitur, "Do you… know a lot about heraldry?"

"Oh, I should think so," he winked slyly. "I also knew a dog once, in Switzerland, looked a bit like a St. Bernard, named Barry. Actually, he was called Barry der Menschenretter."

"…thanks for the comparison," Barry grumped good-naturedly. A St. Bernard,  _really?_

"Hey, he was a fantastic dog! He worked rescue, saved a lot of lives. Oh, we're here!"

'Here' was a café with a small outdoor seating area, a green-striped awning, and a free-standing chalkboard announcing the day's specials on the sidewalk. It provided much more upscale drinks than the cup of gas-station coffee it would be replacing, giving Barry's sense of fairness a swift kick in the shins.

"You really don't have to…"

"Nonsense, Barry-with-a-Y-and-also-an-A! This's the only place around that makes a halfway-decent cuppa tea. You go find us a table, I'll get the drinks." He gave Barry a gentle push on one shoulder, "Go, on, shoo!"

Barry found a small round table next to the wall, alongside a painting by a local artist of a wet dog sitting in a wheelbarrow. The dog was also purple. Barry amused himself for a few moments contemplating that particular compositional choice, when Merlin returned with two steaming mugs of coffee.

"Why'd you get coffee if this is the only place that makes good tea?"

"I never said they made good tea; I said they made halfway-decent tea. Why on earth would I settle for something only halfway to being decent? I patronize this establishment in the hopes that, if they stick around long enough, maybe someday they'll make all-the-way decent tea." He offered Barry one mug, "I wasn't sure what you take in yours…"

"Black is fine. I've spent a lot of time around cops; 'paint-stripper coffee' is an understatement."

"Bit of trouble with the law, then?" Merlin smirked, waggling his eyebrows for effect.

"Ah, no - my foster-dad, the one who likes jazz, he's a cop."

"Ah, I see." Barry's strange companion enthusiastically ripped open two packets of sugar and dumped them in his coffee. He seemed content to stir his drink in silence; his shift from irrepressible chatterbox to silent observer caught Barry flat-footed, who was unused to keeping up a conversation with a stranger.

"So…" For that matter, nothing like this had ever happened to Barry before. He wasn't the sort of guy to hang out with a new friend in a coffee shop. But that was mostly due to a noticeable dearth of new friends, rather than a lack of interest in the general venue. There was Iris, but if he'd ever asked her out for coffee, it would have…well, it would have been like he was asking her  _out_  for coffee. And until he was certain he wanted  _that_  to be his opening move, he'd play it safe, and not ask Iris out for date-like coffee. Speaking of…

"This isn't a date, is it?" Barry could feel his face flush, and wished he could take the question back as soon as he said it.  _Awkward._

"A bit forward, you think? Me, not you - sorry if I've made you uncomfortable, I can see how that could be disconcerting, if you'd agreed to a date without realizing it. No, I just really like meeting new people. Life's full of meetings and partings. You live long enough, and there are a lot of partings, so it's best to have plenty of meetings to compensate." He rubbed absently at his jaw, his gazing turning distant for a moment.

Barry tried to shake off the sudden melancholy that had descended, "But...that doesn't add up. Isn't there always going to be a one-to-one ratio? You can't have two partings for one meeting, or a meeting without a parting, unless you glue yourself to their hip."

"Quite right, quite right," Merlin bobbed his head, bird-like, "Although, I think you're rather missing the  _spirit_  of the argument. Still, some things you can only learn for yourself." He took a sip of coffee, made a face, and added another packet of sugar. "So what brings you to this sleepy little hamlet?"

Barry opened his mouth to speak, then hesitated, swallowing back words that too often brought nothing but scorn down on his head. "You'll say it's impossible." He said dismissively instead.

Merlin propped both his elbows on the table, resting his chin on his hands,"With a hook like that, now you have to tell me."

"No, you really won't believe me…and, and we were having a nice conversation. I'd like to be able to keep having it."

The dark-haired Brit clucked his tongue, "I won't think you're crazy for believing in impossible things. Six before breakfast, that's me."

"Oh, sure, people  _say_  that." He rolled his eyes, long experience having taught him that while people were willing to tolerate UFO chasers and ghost-hunters as being mostly-sane but eccentric, they were less tolerant of someone whose cause didn't have a large internet following.

Maybe he should start a blog, build up credibility.

Seeing his hesitation, Merlin thumped one fist on the table, "Alright, I'll prove it to you." He spread his hands expansively. "Four hundred years ago, the fastest anyone could ever imagine traveling over land was by a well-bred horse. Three hundred years ago, and the scientific community still thought meteorites were nothing but superstitious folklore, that rocks couldn't possibly fall from the sky. Two hundred years ago, heavier-than-air flying machines were an impossible dream. A hundred years ago, it was inconceivable to harness the power of the atom, and as recently as fifty years ago people said  _The Beatles_  would never make it as a band." He grinned mischievously, " 'When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.' "

"Clarke's First Law of Prediction." Barry recognized the quote.

"That's right. I should like to point out the bit about him being an  _elderly_  scientist is very important. Believe-you-me, looking like a doddery old codger is the only way to get any credibility. You have to look at least 70 for anyone to take you seriously. Especially if you're a wizard, in which case you also need a two-foot beard and a pointy hat. You'd think that would  _hurt_  your credibility, dressing up like that, but no _oo_ -oo, he's got to have a pointy hat to be a proper wizard!" He grumbled incoherently to himself for a few more moments as he sat back in his chair. Barry caught the words 'toad' and 'donkey' - nonplussed, he elected not to ask. Then all of Merlin's focus was riveted on Barry once again, and he felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. "So, let's have it, then. What impossible thing have you come for?"

Barry shrugged, but he finally caved, "Have you heard reports of strange, lightning-like flashes in the forest near here?"

"I might have done." Merlin nodded seriously, but then he shrugged, smiling lop-sidedly, "But, refresh my memory...?"

"Two weeks ago, some hikers spotted some weird lights in the woods." Barry pulled the clipping from his pocket and smoothed the creases out on the table. "Normally, I wouldn't pursue sightings of 'strange lights,'" he applied finger-quotes as appropriate, "Chasing orbs is for ghost hunters and paranormal wackjobs." Barry flushed at Merlin's arched brow, "Look, I know how it sounds, for me to come down on the side of the skeptics. It's not that I - what I mean is, I don't believe in paranormal  _explanations_. I've been dismissed far, far too often to easily brush aside others' claims because they seem out-there, but my credulity only stretches so far as the  _phenomena_ , not the pseudo-science crackpot theory behind them."

Merlin hmmm-ed non-noncommittally. "So why come to Glastonbury?"

"Because there was more strangeness than just the lights. In the weeks before, there'd been a rash of animal attacks - attributed to coyotes - several small brush fires nowhere near any campsites, people getting lost for hours on well-marked trails, even a cougar sighting, and those are  _extremely_  uncommon in this area. Like, this was the first sighting in well over a hundred years. All the weirdness culminates in a massive lightshow one evening two weeks ago. And the lights described? The hikers in the area said it looked like localized lightning, going  _sideways_ , repeatedly. In daylight, they found footprints and scorch marks, but surprisingly nothing had caught fire.

"I don't know if I believe all that craziness really happened, and it's not just people telling stories," Barry continued, "But then, why lightning? Why not the wisps or orbs people usually report; wouldn't that be more credible?" Barry was practically vibrating in his seat (he hoped his voice didn't tremble, didn't betray just  _how much_  this meant to him,  _how close_  he might be; it was a heady thought).

"So what do you think happened?"

Barry let out a controlled breath. "I don't know. That's what I hope to find out. I don't know if it's the same - see, when I was little, I ... saw something. And this incident has some similarities. And a lot more differences." He scrubbed both hands through his hair, "Is it the same guy, or someone else who can do the same thing - if it it even  _is_  the same thing. But maybe that doesn't matter. If it's not him, whoever it is might still  _know_  something.  _Especially_  if the source of the lightning was the same, fundamentally." Merlin might even believe him if he told him about the details of that night, but Barry didn't feel in the mood to bring it up his mom's death.

All the while Barry was explaining, Merlin had been nodding along, listening, not patronizing, and for the first time in  _ever_  Barry felt vindicated. Merlin was willing to believe him, and not because he knew Barry particularly well and thought him trustworthy. Instead, he believed Barry, a relative stranger, because... because maybe it wasn't so unbelievably far-fetched after all. The feeling was extremely gratifying. "So that's why I came here, chasing the impossible. It's what I do."

"Chasing the impossible." Merlin repeated slowly, savoring the syllables, "S'a good line - I might borrow it. Of course, usually the impossible chases  _me_ , but what can you do?" He shrugged, "Just destiny, I suppose."

Barry stifled a snort, trying to disguise it as a cough.

"What, you don't believe in Destiny? Aren't you the one dreaming impossible dreams?" He whistled a few bars of music that Barry didn't recognize, looking at him hopefully, "Man of La Mancha? No?"

"Destiny, like predetermination?" Barry shook his head, ignoring Merlin's rabbiting trains of thought, "Scientifically, it just doesn't make sense. Sure, some interpretations of quantum physics argue for determinism, that for a given set of pre-conditions, there can only be one possible outcome. That nothing is random, it's all cause-and-effect - like a dice roll, which technically isn't governed by chance but by force and angles of collision. I mean, yeah, okay, our thoughts are just synapses firing in our brains in response to stimuli, so  _conceivably_  there could be only one possible course of events starting from the Big Bang, every action of every atom accounted for as they collide and interact, but I think the counter-argument is a lot more compelling. Take the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, for instance..." Barry trailed off, internally reminding himself to 'be aware of his audience.' "Uh, but that all gets pretty technical. Just - destiny?" he huffed a laugh, "I don't think I can believe that."

"No, you're right," Merlin shrugged again, "For that to be true, the physical laws governing the universe - whether we know what they are or not - would have to be immutable, and I just don't think that's the case."  _That_ was an interesting stance to take. "We have agency, autonomy; we make our own decisions, and we must live with the consequences, whatever they may be... There isn't just one path laid out before us, but many. Some things may be destined, but the  _how_  of it, the  _how_  is always in our keeping. So, yes, I  _do_  believe in destiny - that some things are Meant to Be. For instance, I believe there are great things in store for the future. And it might not be scientific, nor rooted in evidence, and I daresay there will be ups and downs (darkest before the dawn, and all that), but I genuinely believe, to the bottom of my heart, that the day will come when all mankind stand as equals in brotherhood."

Barry was a little overwhelmed by Merlin's impassioned speech. Still... "That's not destiny; that's optimism."

"Is it? I think it's Destiny. It isn't a hope or faith that things will improve; it is a conviction that they will, because it is meant to be. I think there will be people born on this earth who will inspire us, who will bring out the very best in ourselves, so that we may go on to inspire others in turn. Because  _that_  choice, the choice to do the right thing, is never a question of fate but of humanity."

Something about Merlin's words, about the way he spoke, lit something warm in Barry's chest. It breathed life into embers that had smoldered for twelve years, sending invigorating fire through his veins. The grind of constantly being doubted had started to wear him thin, but now,  _now_  he felt renewed purpose.

"That...yeah, okay." It wasn't a position Barry felt particularly inclined to argue against.

* * *

They continued to talk for almost an hour, until the overcast skies of that morning darkened and began to threaten rain quite insistently, and Merlin said he'd better get going if he didn't want to get drenched.

He swept up both their mugs in one hand and even bused the table a bit with one napkin, before he bustled off to drop off the mugs in a bin of used dishware. In the same span of time, Barry had only just managed to struggle into his coat.

"Well!" Merlin clapped his hands together as he returned to the table, "This has been quite the meeting, hasn't it?"

"Uh, yeah, it was very nice to meet you. And thank you again for the coffee."

"I think it was well worth it," Merlin winked, and re-wrapped his blue scarf several times around his neck. "Who knows? Maybe we'll run into each other again some time."

They shook hands, and then Merlin swept out the door - "Best of luck on your quest!" - leaving Barry behind to figure out his next move. It took him several moments to remember where he'd been and what he'd been doing before he bumped into Merlin. As it turned out, he was in luck; the little café offered wi-fi to its patrons, so he shrugged back out of his coat and booted up his laptop. Time to see if he could track down the names of any of the hikers who had witnessed the lights...

It wasn't until he reflexively checked his inbox first thing that he realized he'd completely failed to exchange any sort of contact info.  _Darn it._  He thought he might have liked e-mailing Merlin, keeping in touch. The guy's thoughts bounced around more than a caffeinated ferret, but he'd been good company, and had taken a genuine interest in what Barry had to say. Oh well, nothing he could do about it now.

Merlin would probably think that if they were 'meant' to meet again, they would. That would have to be enough for him.

* * *

Later that evening, high on the banks of the Connecticut River, beneath the sprawling boughs of an ancient white oak tree, a lanky, youthful figure leaned against a tall, twisting wooden staff.

"Well! He was quite the young man, wasn't he?" he said cheerfully into the gloaming.

"A storm is coming for that boy." A gruff voice spoke from about knee-height.

"Yeah, thanks for that, I didn't hardly notice." Merlin rolled his eyes. It  _was_  interesting, though, how lightning danced invisibly in Barry's footsteps.

His small, troll-like companion grunted. The puckwudgie had smooth gray skin and a prominent nose, with ears like clamshells. When he turned his head up to face Merlin directly, his eyes caught the fading light and seemed to glow.

"I will relax once he is gone. We do not need any more trouble here."

The puckwudgies were a race of shape-shifting forest spirits native to the area. They rather reminded Merlin of the brownies back home - usually benevolent, but every so often one would turn into a violent, destructive boggart, and there was nothing for it but for him to go out and fight the thing.

Merlin rolled the smooth wood of his Sidhe staff between his palms. Fighting the puckwudgie-gone-bad hadn't been pleasant. Oh, for a warlock of his caliber it hadn't posed any particular threat to  _him_ , but this particular puckwudgie had had a family - a wife and two children - that he'd  _cannibalized_  when he went 'round the bend. Merlin hadn't had much choice but to blast it with lightning, before it could hurt anyone else (his tried-and-true method for dealing with any rogue fae, when reasoning would not work).

"You'll be alright now?" He'd stayed to help the surviving puckwudgies get back on their feet. And because they were good company, at least to a fellow magical being like himself. Spending too long in the company of Men wore at him sometimes, and it felt good to get back to his roots as the embodiment of magic.

He'd also had a Feeling he should stay, and he'd learned centuries ago it was always better to trust those. Sure enough, it hadn't been long before the boy with the ozone smell stumbled into town. And stumbled into the woods. Merlin was certain that  _he'd_  never made such a racket trailing after Arthur in the forests surrounding Camelot (he imagined that Arthur would rather gleefully point out how wrong he was, the prat). The newcomer had poked around the site a bit, but there really wasn't much to see, beyond a few indistinct scorch-marks. The puckwudgies, wary of an intruder, had remained invisible, as was their wont, and Merlin had perched in one of his favorite trees to keep a sharp hawk's eye on him. When the young man had wandered back into town in search of answers, it hadn't been hard to find a moment to bump into him.

Barry had been fun to talk to, and Merlin had quite enjoyed himself. He didn't know all the specifics of it, but it was clear that Destiny had her clutching fingers all over the boy. He'd thought maybe a bit of a pep talk was in order, since he knew how troublesome destinies could be. Still, it was probably time for Merlin to move on; he had his own Path to follow.

"Well!" He thumped his staff once against the ground, "I've lingered here long enough. Best be off! You take care now."

The puckwudgie nodded solemnly and shifted into a porcupine to shuffle back into the forest. Merlin summoned his own magic to vanish in a sharp gust of wind, leaving that patch of forest uninhabited and unremarkable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trivia, in order of appearance:
> 
> Bridgewater Triangle: Named after the one in Bermuda, the Bridgewater Triangle is a 200 square mile area in southeastern Massachusetts with a reputation for ghosts, UFOs, cattle mutilations, Bigfoot, etc.
> 
> Martin Freeman. Actor. At the time this fic takes place, 'The Hobbit' isn't out yet, but the second season of BBC's 'Sherlock' will be released in the U.S. in another month or so. As a forensic scientist, I'm sure Barry can appreciate the profound impact Doyle's stories had on the development of modern forensic science
> 
> Sir David Attenborough. Nature documentarian and broadcaster with a long and illustrious career.
> 
> Bartholomew Roberts. Most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy, taking over 470 vessels.
> 
> "Like the author!" Sir James M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan. 
> 
> Leon Brown "Chu" Berry. Tenor saxophonist in several major swing bands in the 1930's; his best-known affiliation with Cab Calloway's orchestra. 
> 
> Cab Calloway. Key figure in the 1930's swing/big band jazz scene, closely associated with The Cotton Club in Harlem. He continued to perform until his death in 1996.
> 
> Barry der Menschenretter. a proto-Saint Bernard who worked as a mountain rescue dog in Switzerland from 1800 to 1812, saving over 40 lives in his career.
> 
> "Four hundred years ago, the fastest anyone could ever imagine traveling over land was by a well-bred horse." This was also true three hundred years ago and even two hundred years ago. The first successful steam locomotive wasn't built until 1814, and since they were developed to haul loads, they chugged along at slow speeds. In 1830, the Tom Thumb could carry 36 passengers along at a whopping 18 mph. 
> 
> Meteorites: It was not until 1794 that the physicist Ernst Chladni published a book in which he argued that meteorites came from outer space. Prior to this, the French Academy of Sciences had famously stated that "rocks don't fall from the sky."
> 
> Heavier-than-air flying machines. People continued to nay-say right up until 1903, when the Wright Brothers made their seminal flight in Kitty Hawk. Then in 2013, Connecticut started pushing for recognition of Gustave Whitehead's alleged 1901 flight. As of this writing, the controversy is still ongoing.
> 
> Harnessing the power of the atom: In 1934, Albert Einstein was quoted as saying, "There is not the slightest indication that [nuclear energy] will ever be obtainable." Nuclear chain reactions had been hypothesized in 1933, and in 1942 the first artificial nuclear reactor was turned on in Chicago. 
> 
> In 1962, an executive at Decca Records told The Beatles that they "didn't like the sound, and groups of guitars were on the way out."
> 
> Clarke's First Law of Prediction. Sir Arthur C Clarke, British science fiction writer and futurist. His Third Law of Prediction, sometimes referred to simply as 'Clarke's Law,' reads: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. His Second Law states: The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
> 
> Man of La Mancha. Musical based around Cervantes' Don Quixote. 
> 
> Determinism. My knowledge of quantum physics (and philosophy) comes primarily from Wikipedia, and I cherry-picked the bits of technobabble I wanted to use. So, Barry's summation is both a very crude approximation and over-simplified. There's a reason Barry trails off before I have to figure out Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
> 
> Puckwudgies: Magical people of the forest in Algonquian folklore, whose stories are told throughout the northeastern United States, southeastern Canada, and Great Lakes region. Their nature in the folklore varies greatly from tribe to tribe. Very similar to European gnomes or fairies, they are described as being mischievous tricksters (ranging from harmless pranks on your neighbor to stealing children or deadly sabotage). Generally considered a good idea to treat them with respect and/or leave them alone. What powers are attributed to them varies, but may include the ability to turn invisible, confuse people or make them forget things, shapeshift into cougars or other animals, or create fire at will.
> 
> Merlin. In BBC's adaptation, Merlin was a young man who becomes Arthur's manservant (his magic must remain secret upon pain of death) and is told by a prophetic dragon that he is destined to protect Arthur, who will one day bring about a golden age of peace and prosperity. Arthur falls in battle (as prophesized), and Merlin has been waiting ever since for his return as The Once and Future King. He at times used a spell to age himself into an old man as a disguise, appearing much like the archetypal wizard which he codifies. (Glastonbury, CT was chosen as a nod to Glastonbury Tor, believed by some to be the Isle of Avalon, where King Arthur was buried)


	14. Slumber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris was having a sleepover, so Joe decided it was a good opportunity to spend some time with Barry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set pre-series, 2002. parental!Joe POV

At 9 pm, Joe decided it was time to put in an appearance. It wasn't as though he had any expectations that the girls would actually sleep at the ironically-named 'slumber' party, but he thought it would be good to make a token show of parental oversight. Iris was a good kid, and though she was less than a year away from teenagerdom, she remained generally rule-abiding (and sassy and smart and so very, very much like her mother), so Joe wasn't overtly worried about what she and her friends could get up to.

Joe listened at the door for a moment before knocking. Chatter and laughter, and no one shrieking: good. (Even shrieking wouldn't necessarily mean things were going poorly, but it was much harder on his nerves. And ears). He rapped smartly on the door, "Iris? Alright if I come in for a moment?"

There was a sudden hush (and sounds of shushing) from within. Someone - he thought it might have been Karen - exclaimed, "It's the police!" to peals of laughter. "Come in, Dad," Iris called out with a long-suffering sigh.

Joe poked his head in, "Just wanted to see how you girls were doing."

"We're doing fine." Iris crossed her arms pointedly. Indeed, they did seem to be doing well. All four girls were sitting in a circle on the floor, dressed in their pajamas with a bowl of popcorn in the center. Their sleeping bags had already been unrolled, various furnishings moved about to accommodate, and the usually well-ordered stack of board games on the bookcase had very clearly been pawed through, and was now somewhat askew.

Very aware that the Embarrassing Parent threshold at sleepovers was firmly set at a lamentably-low 30-second exposure time, Joe wished them all a good night and ducked out of the room.

He moved to Barry's room next and knocked. There was a sound from within that was enough like an affirmative that Joe took the chance and opened the door.

Barry was sitting at his desk, working industriously on his homework. Joe stifled the impulse to frown. It wasn't that Joe disapproved of being studious - just the opposite. But it made him very aware that working late on a Friday night on homework was not typical thirteen-year-old behavior.

If homework was what Barry  _wanted_  to do, more power to him. Barry genuinely liked school, loved learning, and Joe'd be damned if he ever said or did anything to quash that bright spark, like question his study habits.

However, if Barry was staying up late working on schoolwork because he didn't feel he had any  _alternatives_ , if he was alone not by choice while Iris was with her friends… Joe knew Barry didn't begrudge Iris her time spent with her own friends. The kid had too good a heart. But it hadn't escaped Joe's notice that Barry never asked if  _he_  could have friends over, nor was he ever invited to anyone's house.

So when he saw Barry engaged in solitary pursuits on a Friday night, his heart ached, because he didn't think the reason had anything to do with getting a head start on his workload. He didn't voice any of these thoughts or concerns out loud to Barry, though, who had put down his pencil and spun his chair around to face him while Joe loitered in the doorway.

"Hey, Bear."

"Hey, Joe." Barry returned, clearly uncertain what Joe was doing there.

"Are you busy?" A plan was beginning to take shape in his mind.

Barry fidgeted, as though he suspected there were a right and a wrong answer to the question, and he didn't know which was which. He split the difference and shrugged instead.

"That's good," Joe smiled, "Means I have you all to myself."

Barry sat a little straighter in his chair, "What did you have in mind?" (Then, remembering unwritten teenager codes of conduct, he slouched nonchalantly.)

"Well… how about a book?"

"Joe. I'm  _thirteen_. That's too old for bedtime stories." He looked positively scandalized at the suggestion.

"Who said anything about bedtime stories? You're grown-up now; that means we get to read the more interesting stuff. When I was your age, my dad still read to us. Call of the Wild, The Invisible Man, The Great Gatsby." His dad had been a big fan of the classics, and Joe tried to remember which ones Barry hadn't already had to read for class, "Slaughterhouse-Five, The Maltese Falcon, Watership Down."

Barry pushed back from the desk, giving his wheeled chair an extra one-and-a-half spins while he was at it. "Which was your favorite?"

"Hard to pick a favorite," he prevaricated, thinking fast about which he felt Barry would enjoy listening to. Books that were more satirical or politically-charged tended to work better when read to oneself, but the adventure stories had always captivated Joe and his siblings. There was something to the familiar formula that was enough like their childhood bedtime stories to draw them in, make them feel free to imagine and dream, while the more advanced content managed to avoid bruising their delicate teenage egos. "I always rather liked Watership Down," he settled on.

"What's that about?"

"Well, it's about this group of rabbits - "

Barry wrinkled his nose. "Rabbits? You said it wasn't a bedtime story!"

Joe waved off the accusation, "It isn't. There's plenty of gore and violence. One of the rabbits rips out another's throat."

"Really?"

"With his teeth." Joe confirmed.

"Well, alright then." Barry settled back, mollified.

Joe hurried to retrieve the book before Barry could change his mind. He knew he'd seen it somewhere on the bookcase in the study, but he wasn't at all sure what shelf it was on. By the time Joe returned, book in hand, Barry had (despite Joe's assurances that this was not a bedtime story) changed into his pj's and relocated to the bed. The sight made Joe feel a warm glow in his heart. He sat at the foot of the bed, and began to read.

"This first bit is a quote from  _Agamemnon;_  all the chapters begin with a different quotation. So," Joe cleared his throat,  _"_ Chorus: Why do you cry thus, unless at some vision of horror? Cassandra: The house reeks of death and dripping blood..."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't mean to perpetuate masculine stereotypes with the blood'n'guts thing. Canonically, Barry's got a separate Zombie Movie Scale; I figured there was precedent.
> 
> Blackberry might be the rabbit-equivalent of a scientific genius, but Barry's favorite rabbit is actually Hazel, because he believes in Fiver and the impossible things he says. :)


	15. Where There's a Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On his 18th birthday, Barry receives an unexpected letter from his dad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set pre-series, 2007, Barry POV
> 
> A lot of headcanon-type thoughts about legal paperwork and whatnot, so, not a happy!fun!times! birthday party fic - much more hurt/comfort and teenaged tempers

The cake has been eaten, the presents unwrapped. Everyone's now lounging in the living room, laughing, talking, conversing easily, excitedly. It's been a good birthday, Barry thinks, just him and Iris and Joe. Uncomplicated.

But Barry notices that Joe's been getting quieter and quieter as the evening progresses, and when Iris catches his eye, he knows that she's noticed it as well. Still, Barry's reluctant to interrupt the easy camaraderie; if Joe has something on his mind, it's up to Joe to share it, or not.

Eventually, Joe clears his throat during a lull in the conversation (sharing it is, then). He pulls out an envelope from behind his chair, leaning forward to pass it to Barry. "This is for you, from - from your dad."

Barry takes it from Joe with suddenly-clumsy fingers. The envelope is letter-sized, and not the sort to hold a birthday card. It's heavy, stuffed thick with papers, and on the front it reads: *To my son Barry, on his 18th*

He slits it open carefully, only peripherally aware of Joe's and Iris's eyes on him. Inside is a sheaf of important-looking documents, with a cover letter on top written in what he recognizes as his Dad's handwriting. He reads:

_*4-18-2000_

_Hey, Slugger_

_If you're reading this, Happy Birthday! Congratulations on turning 18, I know I couldn't be more proud of you, and I only wish I could be there to see the wonderful man I know you'll have become._

_I know it's not actually your birthday - well for you it is - ~~but the paperwork just went through and~~_

_You're legally an adult now! Knowing you, you're probably getting ready to go off to college. The contents of this envelope should help with that. More on that in a moment._

_Growing into adulthood is a gradual process. You begin to pick up an adult's responsibilities a little at a time. You stumble, you fall, you pick yourself up again, hopefully a little wiser. (Doesn't mean you won't ever stumble again). You learn in increments, so that by the time you turn eighteen, you're already ready to take your first steps into a larger world._

_I mentioned adult responsibilities - voting is one of them. I don't think the importance of exercising this fundamental right can be overstated. Not smoking is another, I hope that goes without saying, now that you're old enough to buy cigarettes. I know you're smarter than that. You've probably been able to drive for a few years, and since, at the time of this writing, you are only 11 years old, forgive me if the thought of you behind a wheel is terrifying. Drive safe, don't drink, and follow the speed limit!_ _Going fast is not all it's cracked up to be; ask any trauma surgeon._

_There is another responsibility coming to you, that you might not be aware of. Now that you're an adult, you will have executive power over the Allen estate. That includes the money from your mother's life insurance policy, as well as the college savings fund we set up for you as a baby. There's also the funds in my own account (I won't be needing it), and whatever money was made from the sale of our house. ~~God, I wish it wasn't necessary to~~_   _It would've been nice to leave you the house, but it's just not practical to let it stand empty for ten years. Bottom line, you've got a nice tidy nest-egg coming your way - should see you to whatever school you want, anywhere in the country. Oh, but, by this time of year, you've probably already responded to an acceptance letter. Well, wherever you go - college is what you make of it._

_I would tell you to use the money responsibly, but that's not something my written words can influence one way or another. Right now, at 11, you're only just learning to be responsible for your fish, but you show a great deal of promise, Slugger. I'm sure, with time, you will grow into an independent, capable adult._

_You didn't wake up this morning more responsible at 18 than you were at 17. But you do have more responsibilities to shoulder now, and when you start college, you'll be responsible for yourself in a way you've never had to be before. Eat well, study hard - but not too hard! Enjoy yourself, be happy._

_You bring such light to the world, Barry, you have so much faith in people. Don't ever lose your faith, son. You are one of the most considerate people I have ever known. High praise for a pre-teen, I know, but I just want you to realize just how special you are. Oh, but you're not a pre-teen anymore. Writing letters to the future is confusing._

_I love you Barry. Don't ever doubt that._

_Happy Birthday_

_Dad*_

When he reaches the end of the letter, Barry bursts out of his seat, shaking and furious. "How could he!" he very nearly bellows, "How  _dare_  he?!"

Alarmed, Joe reaches out to him, "Hey, hey, calm down, Barry. What does the letter say?"

A part of Barry wants to crumple the letter in his fist, but another part wants to clutch it to his chest and never let go. He does neither, and instead, he shakes the letter at Joe, "He - he - It's like he's given up! It's like his freakin' will, but! My dad's  _alive_ , he's not, he's not  _dead_  - I'm not a, he's not - !"

"Barry, Barry! Look at me!" Feeling overwhelmed and confused, Barry does, a part of him thankful to have somebody else tell him what to do, "Barry, may I see the letter? Is that alright?"

Mute, Barry hands the letter over and stomps back over to the couch, collapsing into it. Iris is by his side in an instant. She throws one arm over his shoulder, and the other… her hand brushes against his cheek? Oh, he's crying - he hadn't realized. All the fight goes out of him, as he leans into Iris's support and waits for Joe to finish reading.

When he does, he folds up the letter and sets it aside, leaning forward with his hands clasped in front of him and his elbows resting on his knees.

"I know we haven't talked about it much. Or at all. And maybe we should have, sometime in the past seven years." Joe takes a moment to collect his thoughts before he continues. "It probably shouldn't surprise you that I've had power of attorney since you moved in with us. Comes with being a legal guardian. But your dad signed over funds as well, to keep your accounts in trust for you until you turned eighteen.

"Some of the money, a good chunk went to his legal expenses, and there were provisions for your…" Joe trails off, setting aside the legal technicalities, probably thinking (correctly) that Barry is not yet in the right frame of mind to be able to process these sorts of details, even if he has stopped shaking.

"I'm sorry, Barry. Your dad, he was just being pragmatic." Joe pauses, takes a moment to pick his words with delicacy, "I don't think he intended – or expected – this letter to be upsetting." Which sounds to Barry like a very diplomatic way of saying he's over-reacting. And he  _knows_  that, and what makes it even more frustrating is that he's not sure why he's reacting this way. It was a sappy letter and his dad loves him and is proud of him, so why did it make him so mad?

"I need - I need some time to process. Thank you for the cake, and the presents," he finishes mechanically, belatedly remembering that, as a matter of fact, Joe and Iris have just helped him celebrate his birthday. He stands up to go, turning first towards the stairs before turning back to collect the letter without a word, without looking at anyone. He retreats to his room and collapses onto his bed, setting the letter carefully on his nightstand.

He knows that if he re-reads the letter, he'll only get himself worked up again. He isn't sure if that's what he wants or not. On the one hand, he's furious to have received an inheritance before he's even twenty, from his dad of all people, who's alive and going to stay that way for many years to come (and who is not, emphatically  _not_ , going to stay in prison, and will need his money someday).

On the other hand, he can understand the practicality of it. His memories of the estate sale seven years are cloudy and crystal-clear in turn, grief dulling some moments while bringing others into sharp focus. For instance, he only remembers a furious resentment directed towards all the strangers stomping through  _his family's_  house, but he can't remember where he was or what he was actually doing at the time. He was still coming to grips with losing both his parents; the rational need to sell the house was a little beyond his comprehension.

He does, however, have a very clear memory of being asked if he wanted to pick out some keepsakes to remember his mom by. Joe had brought him a box of his mom's things, things Barry recognized as being taken from on top of her dresser, from the mantel in the living room, and from the china cabinet in the dining room. It had taken Joe a couple of tries for his intent to get through to Barry; once Barry had understood what was being asked of him, he'd looked through the box of treasures, holding memories in his hands, before settling on the snowglobe, pulling it close to his chest. He'd also picked out silver cake knife, because he remembered being told it had belonged to his great-grandmother, and that seemed like the sort of thing he was supposed to hold on to, and a bottle of her perfume because it smelled  _just like her_.

Then he'd asked to see his dad's things, to pick something out, and everyone had gotten quiet and tense, and Joe looked  _angry_ , so all Barry picked was his dad's stethoscope, an old antique given to his dad by his dad's great-uncle.

He holds that stethoscope in his hands now, running his fingers over the slightly-cracked rubber tubing, the spots of corrosion on the diaphragm. One of the ear pieces is missing, and he doesn't know when that happened.

There's a pounding ache behind Barry's eyes, the stress of not crying and then crying (and, at the moment, not crying again, tears all spent). The cycle is interrupted by a soft knock at the door, and before he can respond one way or the other, Iris comes into the room and drops down on the bed next to him.

"Some birthday, huh?"

"Some birthday," he agrees morosely.

"If I'd known, I'd have told Dad to save it for tomorrow, at the earliest."

Barry shrugs noncommittally. "My Dad wanted to wish me a happy birthday." He doesn't know what Joe has told Iris about the contents of the envelope, whether he said anything at all after Barry left the room. Just thinking about his anger downstairs brings the burning emotions to the surface again. "He shouldn't have done it," he insists, blinking furious tears from his eyes. "He shouldn't have given up!"

"I'm sure that's not – "

"The way he talks in the letter - like he's given up! Like it's his last will and testament - but he's not dead! I - I still have my father! I'm- I'm not an - an  _orphan_! So why, why does my own father treat me like one?"

Iris reaches slowly for the letter, giving him plenty of time to object, but she correctly interprets his lack of resistance as tacit approval to read.

They sit shoulder-to-shoulder in silence as she reads; tears continue to prickle at his eyes, and Iris rubs his back in comfort. She eventually reaches the end of the letter, and passes it back to Barry. It's several more moments before she breaks the silence (that's one of the many things Barry loves about her, how when it really matters, she'll always take the time to think through exactly what she wants to say).

"Well, Barry, you have to keep in mind that he wrote this seven years ago. It doesn't necessarily reflect his attitudes today. Still proud of you, no doubt, and I know he loves you, but maybe you don't need to be so angry with the past."

"I remembered the estate sale. God, I hadn't thought about it in so long." Barry's past is a massive Thing that he could spend all evening brooding over, if Iris lets him.

(She doesn't let him)

She only allows him a moment to mull over it, before steering him back to the present. "The thing is, Barry, accepting this money – No, actually, accepting the fact that this money is already yours… it doesn't mean giving up on your dad. It's not blood money or an attempt to buy you off… I think you've got a sort of false equivalence set up in your head, where maybe you think you'd be trading your dad for his money? But Barry, the money is already yours. Some of it is your college fund, that was always intended to be yours. And some of it…" she takes a deep breath, before plunging onwards, "some of it is money your mom left to you. That all makes it your money, Barry.

"There's no mandate that you have to  _spend_  it. Actually, I think you're supposed to save it as much as possible. One of those fiscally responsible rule-of-thumb things." She playfully bumps her shoulder against his. Feeling considerably better, he bumps her back. It quickly descends into an all-out shoving match, until Barry, predictably, falls off the bed. But he's laughing again, and that feels so good.

* * *

Downstairs, he finds Joe at his corner desk, shifting through papers.

Barry clears his throat, "Hey. Uh…sorry about my outburst, earlier." He flushes, embarrassed, "That was… yeah."

"Hey, don't worry about it. It was a lot at once."

"I was thinking… I know I'm technically an adult now… but I'm also still technically a teenager. Couldn't you, couldn't you keep doing what you've been doing? Managing the account? At least 'til I'm through with college, and  _actually_  moving on into the adult world?"

Joe chuckles, puts his pen down, "The adult world, huh? Is that the technical term?"

Barry shrugs helplessly as Joe rises from his seat, "Sure Barry. I'd be happy to." He claps one hand on Barry's shoulder. "Plus, this way I can keep marking you as a dependent on my tax returns. Bigger tax break."

"Joe!" he squawks in mock outrage. Joe pulls him into an embrace anyway.

"What can I say? When I hug ya, you stay hugged." Joe doesn't let go right away, and when he does, he holds onto Barry's shoulders, keeping him within reach. "Barry, you know that I would have adopted you – I still would – if that were something you wanted."

"Joe, I know that. And you know why I – "

Joe waves him off, "That's not what I'm getting at. You're eighteen, so you've technically aged out of the foster care system."

Barry's brow furrows, confused. "I was never in foster care."

Joe sighs, exasperated, "Barry, what do you think it  _is_  when you go to live with a foster parent? You were never a ward of the state, that's true. But that means that someday soon, not right this minute, you and I need to have a conversation about what you want for yourself, moving forward."

Barry takes a fortifying breath, "Okay, Joe, but not right this minute."

"Not right this minute," Joe agrees. "I think right this minute would be better spent on some leftover cake, don't you?"

He is absolutely right.

* * *

The next day, Barry receives a call from Iron Heights. His dad didn't call very often, constrained as he was by the limits imposed on him by The System, dictating when, how often, and for how long he could use the phone. And no matter how often Barry insisted he didn't mind paying for the call, his dad was always conscientious of the fact that he was only allowed to call collect.

"So you got my letter?" With only ten minutes to talk, they tried to skip the  _hello, how-do-you-do_ 's as much as possible. Henry only ever called with a purpose, after all.

"Yeah, uh... a little warning would have been nice."

"Sorry about that. I would have given you the heads-up if I could have. Though, to be honest, I can't remember most of what I wrote. It was horribly cheesy, wasn't it?"

"The cheesiest." Barry grins. After getting over his emotional upheaval, he was able to appreciate what Iris had pointed out - that the letter was full of love and pride.

"Happy Birthday, Slugger."

"Thanks, Dad."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Artistic license all the way! Not a lawyer, don't know how legal guardianship works. (Also, these issues really should have been addressed prior to his 18th birthday, if the legal consequences are as I described, but then this fic wouldn't have happened)
> 
> "When I hug ya, you stay hugged" is from Cab Calloway's 'Hep Cat Love Song'
> 
> Also, I'm assuming Barry's birthday is before March, if he was 11 on That Night in 2000, and is 25 in the autumn of 2014 (he could also have a winter birthday in 1988, but an early 1989 birthday makes the math generally easier


	16. "You're Still Goin' Strong"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cooking, jazz, and blackmail. Domestic, father-daughter fluff

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set at some future time after Iris is brought into the loop.
> 
> Been wanting to write another Iris POV for awhile; thanks to Microraptor_Glider for giving me a direction ;)

Iris began setting out the ingredients she'd need to make chili, while her dad checked on the potatoes baking in the oven. From the stereo in the living room, Sinatra began to croon the first lines of 'I've Got the World on a String'. Barry was out on patrol, but he'd promised he'd be there in time for dinner, barring any unforeseen catastrophe.

She paused, peering into the produce drawer. "If I double the recipe, do you think it will be enough?"

"Enough?" Joe closed the oven door, giving the potatoes more time to bake.

"For Barry. He eats so much now… "

Her dad stopped digging for a pan and turned to face Iris fully, "Baby girl, you will never be able to cook enough to make him full - it would be crazy to try. Remember when Barry hit that growth spurt that just wouldn't stop? And he could eat an entire eighteen-inch pizza by himself?"

"I certainly do."

"He eats like that all the time, now, and then some. Best you can do is give him a nice big serving, and don't be offended when he goes out and downs eight cheeseburgers afterwards. That's not an insult to your cooking; that's just the way he is."

Iris frowned, her forehead wrinkling as the full implications set in. "That's awful. To never be satisfied with a home-cooked meal."

Her dad just raised both his eyebrows, incredulous, "Iris, if you think being full is what makes a home-cooked meal  _satisfying_ , I'm sorry to tell you that you've been going about it backwards this whole time. And," he held up a warning finger, "I will  _not_  feel guilty to fight with him over the last scoop (we all know your chili is the best damned chili in the state). He can give me all the puppy-dog eyes he wants, but he's doesn't get to play the metahuman-metabolism card to steal chili from the rest of us."

Iris chuckled, relieved, and feeling a little silly for losing sight of the obvious. "Yeah, you're right. There's a whole lot more to family dinners, isn't there?"

"You bet there is. C'mon, chuck that pepper over here and I'll get started on the chopping."

Iris did as he asked, pulling out a second cutting board for herself. They diced vegetables in tandem, classic jazz keeping them on beat and synchronized. 'In the Mood' started up just as Iris was setting into the tomatoes, which was just about the best tomato-dicing rhythm  _ever_  (it was, of course, possible to have Too Much rhythm while cooking, because  _s_ _harp knives_ , so Iris limited herself to some foot-tapping and a little bit of hip-swinging flourish).

She finished the tomatoes just as the song ended (her timing was  _awesome_ ), and she dumped them into the large pot. Dad was taking care of the peppers, so next was… onions. She chopped the first one in half to make it easier to peel.

The Pandora station finished with its ad, and Armstrong came on, playing 'Hello, Dolly!' Her dad nudged her with one elbow, "Hey, do you remember…?"

She nudged him right back, "Of course I remember." How could she forget? Sophomore year of high school, she'd played a Waiter in their production of  _Hello, Dolly!_  It had been a bit part, but she'd loved every minute of it (okay, so, that was probably the nostalgia talking. It had actually required a lot of very repetitive work). She'd had a lot of fun - the drama crowd was so charismatic, and there was a magical energy to being backstage and behind the scenes, like a fizzing under her skin.

Her dad smiled and got to work cooking the ground beef, "I always thought you would have made a great Minnie."

Iris hummed thoughtfully. That's right, she'd been understudy to the girl playing Minnie, but since Jessica hadn't suffered any unfortunate accidents, Iris had remained only a Waiter. Barry and her dad had helped her practice her lines day and night, and while she'd never in a million years wish harm to Jessica, it had been a little disappointing to have put in all that effort learning lines and not get to perform them. Funny how, what had been such a huge part of her life at the time, an investment of untold hours, was now an easily-overlooked memory, lost in the sharper memories of the bright lights and stage fright of opening night, and the frantic scramble of costumes, make-up, 'places, people!'

And even those memories were the last thing on her mind, only ever being called forth when specifically prompted, as the song had done. She supposed that was a natural consequence of building new memories all the time. And so much - so very,  _very_  much - had happened these past few years, the whole world had changed in new and chaotic ways, that it made high school seem like a lifetime ago.

Iris fetched out the can-opener and got to work on adding the beans. They continued to chit-chat, catching up on each other's daily lives as they cooked: Officer Gibbons was getting married; there was a new cub reporter at Picture News; the upstairs bathroom sink was leaking and needed fixing; Buck Sackett was running for Mayor.

She got caught up in a bit of a tirade, talking about something that had happened earlier that week. Stacy, the new girl at CCPN, had complimented her bravery in going to whatever lengths she had to, to track down her stories. Ryan, eavesdropping (in a room full of reporters, accusing anyone of being a snoop was  _extremely_ ineffectual) had given a dismissive, "well, her dad's a cop." Which - maybe was a compliment? It was a true statement, at least, and it certainly wasn't an insult, but  _still._

Her dad was more than a cop; she was more than a cop's daughter. She could admit that sometimes it frustrated her, how people made assumptions about her character because of who her dad was. If she was strong, if she was brash, if she was stubborn and knew how to take care of herself, they chalked it up to 'being a cop's daughter,' as if  _he_  were responsible for  _her_ accomplishments.

Oh, she knew she'd probably be a very different person if her dad worked as, say, a landscape architect. She'd gotten her degree in Psychology, and the amount of class time spent on Nature vs. Nurture...well! There had been  _essays_. Lots and lots of essays, and journal articles, and in-class debate. And, at the end of the day, everyone and everything generally agreed that a person's personality, their core character traits, was a mix of both nature and nurture. But more than that, people were  _complicated_.

So the two-dimensional reduction of everything she was to the over-simplified 'cop's daughter' wasn't fair to her, and it wasn't fair to her dad, because it overlooked moments like these - domestic moments, family moments, moments shared just between the two of them. Her dad was much more than a two-dimensional cop, so weighing in on the Nurture side was much more than a two-dimensional upbringing.

Impulsively, she wrapped her arms around him in a quick hug; he reciprocated as best he could while continuing to stir the meat, which she appreciated, because it looked just about done and it would be a shame if it burned.

At that moment, the front door banged closed and Barry called from the living room, "I'm here!" After the Broccoli Incident (and the Paperwork Incident, and That Time With the Toothbrush) there were very clearly-delineated spaces Barry was allowed to appear in after travelling at speed. The kitchen was not one of them (Barry continued to argue that his high-speed chocolate-chip cookie theft did not violate this agreement, since he never slowed down enough to 'appear,' and only the suspicious disappearance of fresh-baked cookies marked his passing).

Then Barry stepped into the kitchen, and all thoughts of cookie-theft disappeared from Iris's head. Ordinarily, Barry's cowl kept the worst of windswept-ness out of his hair (conversely, the hat-hair could be pretty spectacular some days); however,  _something_  had clearly happened, because Barry's hair was fluffed up like a dandelion, with a number of peculiar cowlicks - one particularly angular tuft stuck out over his left ear.

Best of all, Barry didn't seem to notice. If Iris and her dad could keep it together, could keep their expressions from giving it away… the payoff would be  _fantastic_.

She caught her dad's eye, and saw that they were on the same page on this. Perfect.

(The difficulty was always in catching Barry on camera, because he had reflexes like you wouldn't believe. This was where tag-teaming with her dad had such advantages; one of them could run interference, while the other collected photographic evidence).

"So, Barry, how was patrol?" her dad asked, casually, as though he couldn't tell just by looking at Barry that something out-of-the-ordinary had happened

"It was fine, everything quiet - up until some new crazy in a costume got involved. Sprayed blue goop everywhere. Nasty-smelling stuff, but not actually harmful - just really, really obnoxious. I washed up at S.T.A.R. Labs, I think I got all the smell out." Ah, that would explain it; he'd left the suit at the lab and run here in his civvies, with wet hair. Wind-tunnels were not recommended substitutes for hair-dryers. Evidently, neither was superspeed.

As Barry continued to rant about how sticky goop interfered with his running (but not enough to actually be a hindrance, because  _really?_ They thought Play-Doh could stop The Flash?), Iris toyed with her phone, not facing Barry but not facing suspiciously away, either. She made sure to turn the sound settings on the camera function to silent, and turned the automatic flash off as well, just to be on the safe side.

"Hey, Bear, could you give me your opinion on these potatoes, last time I left them a little under-cooked..." Her dad expertly steered Barry over to the oven, where his back was to Iris. Seizing the moment, Iris tapped her phone's screen once, twice, three times, before Barry caught her motion out of the corner of his eye.

"IRIS!"

She swiftly locked her phone before he could snatch it and delete the embarrassing photos (sure, he could crack the combination in under ten minutes just working through the possibilities, but she knew he respected her privacy more than that). Behind Barry's back, her dad was giving her a thumbs-up. Score!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big band swing is my music of choice when I'm cooking. I challenge anyone to listen to 'In the Mood' and not tap their fingers :D
> 
> Title from lyric in the song 'Hello, Dolly!"


	17. Trust Exercise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When you're stuck between a Rock and a Hard Place, run full-tilt at the Rock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tag to episode 1x17. So, Spoilers

Barry had only a few moments to be in shock before he was running, running, running away from City Hall, and while most of his mind screamed " _bomb! on my wrist! bomb on my wrist!_ " in a panicked loop, the part of him that could still think tactically was fully focused on finding his stride.

How fast was he going? He knew he was going at least 600, because he hadn't been blown to smithereens, but it wasn't as though he had a handy readout to tell him his exact velocity. He knew he could count on Cisco and Caitlin to warn him if he started to lag, but the comm just wasn't practical for real-time updates, especially not when he was counting on them to work on a solution.  _there really_ had  _to be a solution!_

Running as fast as he possibly could wasn't an option, either, because A) it would tire him out faster, and B) accidental time-travel was  _so_  not a thing he needed right now.

The only real benchmark he could observe while running would be if he broke the sound barrier, a little above 700 mph. Traveling at supersonic speeds was noticeably different from running subsonic - quieter, for one thing, as he literally left the sound of his own footsteps in his wake, with a heavy sort of pressure on his ears and his heartbeat thrumming in his head - but he thought going a hundred miles per hour faster than he needed to was probably overkill, which brought him back to his first point, which was  _trying to avoid tiring out at all costs_.

Barry was once again thankful for all the tedious hours he'd logged on the treadmill at the lab, because it gave him the muscle memory to have some idea how fast he was going, even though he couldn't rely on visual input to gauge his speed; he decided to target 625 mph, to give himself a bit of leeway if his estimate was off.

As soon as he felt he'd found the right pace and had the focus to spare, he'd cried out for help. "Cisco!"

He was hoping that maybe they'd already figured out the answer, but he was also desperate and on the verge of panicking, and he really wished he could take the time to freak-out properly.

Truth be told, he actually hadn't ever seen 'Speed,' just picked up bits and pieces through cultural osmosis, so he didn't know how the movie ended, (he wondered if he was going to lose nerd cred for what was apparently an egregious oversight, because wondering about stupid things like that was better than hyperventilating about  _the bomb on his wrist_ ).

Unfortunately, Cisco didn't have good news.

"But I can't run forever!"

In the back of his mind, he kept musing about movies, because if he was focusing on running, and focusing on what the others were saying over the comm, and thinking stupid thoughts about irrelevant things, very little brainpower was left for freaking out. So for a fraction of a second (and as The Flash, a fraction of a second was plenty of time), he considered what other Keanu Reeves movies might suddenly become pertinent to his real life; he'd already mastered Matrix-style bullet dodging, and he'd even time-traveled (which was the complete opposite of a zany, madcap adventure, because time-travel  _sucked_ ). What did that leave? A vengeance-seeking samurai? An extra-terrestrial visitor? Lawyers?

And then Wells told him he needed to run into a wall, and Barry's first thought was ' _bug on a windshield_ '. As a CSI, he'd been at the scene of several hit-and-runs, so he knew what 50-mph-collisions did to a body. He didn't  _want_  to imagine what 600 mph would do, but he did anyway, and the thought repeated itself -  _bug on a windshield_.

Wells said, "You can do this. I believe in you."

"I can't," he replied. And what he really meant was,  _'I can't say the same. I can't believe in you.'_

From the outside, it looked like it could be a great trust exercise, running towards near-certain death on the say-so of Dr. Wells, who promised he would survive. If his life were a movie, this would be some epic gesture of profound trust. In a movie, he'd take a leap of blind faith and listen to his eccentric (yet good-hearted) mentor, and in a moment of triumph he'd succeed, and afterwards everyone would have strong feelings of goodwill towards all mankind, or something.

However, life wasn't a movie, and this was going to be a problem, because he couldn't trust Wells.

But then Wells started describing how it felt to run, giving names to feelings and sensations he'd never had words for, before. He was hearing them for the first time but they sounded so  _right_ , so true, that it made him think Wells was being  _truthful_ , in this at least, even if he remained utterly untrustworthy.

He didn't believe in Wells, and he couldn't trust him.

But he could trust the Speed Force.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updates might come a bit more infrequently now, as my attention is split between Inertia, a not-yet-posted follow-up to Impossible Things, and reviving/completing Relative Truth (which I'll cross-post here once it's finished). Also, the weather is much improved, which means more opportunities for birding, bug collecting, and other geeky outdoor pursuits :)


	18. Stranger Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Iris finds herself unexpectedly alone for dinner, and gets a sympathetic ear from a certain visiting detective from New York's 23rd precinct. (crossover with Gargoyles)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place after 1x16 Rogue Time, before 1x17
> 
> Gargoyles disregards Season 3/The Goliath Chronicles
> 
> With special guest star Elisa Maza! (been awhile since I've watched 'Gargoyles,' hope my characterization isn't too far off.) Makes reference to some headcanon from "Keraunopathy", i.e. Iris once did some research into lightning injuries after Barry got hit

Iris had asked Caitlin to meet her for dinner, wanting to discuss 'lightning psychosis' in greater depth. 'Mood swings' matched what she'd already learned, back when Barry was first struck, but she hadn't seen anything about 'sudden outbursts of affection.' She thought it could have been buried in the dense medical terms she hadn't understood, and wondered what other symptoms might be hidden in jargon, and what sorts of treatments they were investigating at STAR Labs, and -

(She had a list. Mason Bridge had taught her that the way to be prepared was to know what questions you needed to ask)

They were meeting at Broome's Place, because Iris had a coupon for a free basket of wings and she was determined to use it. Though she didn't frequent this bar as often as O'Neil's, she nevertheless recognized a number of its patrons as she walked in; it was, after all, the precinct's preferred hangout. She waved to Officer Bridwell and Sergeant Robbins, before squeezing between chairs to claim a seat at one of the few remaining available tables.

And that was how she'd already settled in and ordered her wings before she got the call from Caitlin, apologizing for cancelling at the last minute, citing an urgent situation at the lab that required her immediate attention. Iris reassured her that it was all fine, and they could reschedule, and when she hung up, she set the phone down on the table in front of her and kneaded the bridge of her nose with one hand. Because now she was alone at the bar, and she'd be rebuffing advances all night (given it was a known cop hangout, the really skeevy characters tended to steer clear, but it would be annoying all the same).

She frowned, thumped her head down on the table, and considered asking to get her wings to go once they finally arrived, rather than sit there and eat by herself.

"Bad news?" An unfamiliar voice asked.

Iris lifted her head, brushing her hair back out of her face to look up at the speaker, an older dark-haired woman with a sympathetic smile. She stood tall with her hands tucked into the pockets of her red leather jacket, giving off an air of breezy confidence.

Iris glanced back down at her phone, shrugged, "Not _bad news_ , bad news. Just - my friend cancelled on me - really last minute, since I'm already here and waiting for food. I know she has a good reason, and at least she had the courtesy to call, but it sometimes seems like everyone is running out on me, lately."

"Looks like I'm in luck then. I was just lamenting the fact that there's no open seats, when I saw that you seemed upset by your call. I really just wanted to see that you're alright, but if this spot is available, do you mind if I take it?"

"Not at all. I'm Iris West," she held out her hand.

"Elisa Maza." The woman - Elisa - returned, taking her hand in a firm grip. Iris could feel familiar gun callouses on her fingers, and had an inkling what had brought her to this particular bar.

"Are you a cop, too?" It wouldn't surprise her if even out-of-town cops managed to find this place; they were probably drawn to it like iron filings to a magnet, or (in recent times) like Barry to an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Elisa blinked, surprised, "Yeah, I am. Detective - NYPD. You?"

That was when Iris realized that her 'too' had been too inclusive. She smiled sheepishly (it was so easy, sometimes, to overlook the fact that despite being treated like family by the rest of the Department, she wasn't actually on the force). "Cop's daughter," she corrected (making a mental note that as a journalist, she should be mindful of ambiguous language). "But you certainly found the right place," she let her eyes track pointedly over the officers scattered about, and caught Elisa's soft chuckle. "I almost applied to the Police Academy," Iris offered, enjoying the connection she felt with this detective.

"Almost?"

"Dad said no, didn't want me to be a cop."

"And you listened to him?" Elisa seemed skeptical, eyebrows arched high, as though she knew through their brief acquaintance that it would be very uncharacteristic for Iris to change her mind without a compelling reason. Or maybe she was just skeptical that _anyone_ would allow themselves to be told what to do.

"Oh, it was a huge blow-up, believe me. But when the dust settled, I was able to re-evaluate. Part of my reason for wanting it so badly was to make him proud. When he made it very clear that he disapproved… well, I realized then that I didn't need his approval, whatever I did. But if I went on to the Academy anyway, it would be just to spite him, instead of because it was something I really wanted to do." She waved the past drama away with one hand, "So that's my story. I wanted to do it for _him_ , but he didn't want it, so then I realized I had to find something to do for _myself_ instead. Find something that I'd really find fulfilling, you know?"

Elisa nodded. "I do. You have to do things your own way, for your own reasons. Though for me, becoming a cop was both my calling and a family tradition: my dad, and his dad, and then me; my younger brother joined the force as a helicopter pilot for a while, before he... went freelance. But I love being a cop, and I can't imagine doing anything else with my life... Ah, but listen to me ramble. You never said what you chose instead...?"

"Well, it took some exploring, but I finally found it: journalism."

"Journalism, huh?"

At that moment, Iris' wings were brought to the table, piping hot and slathered in sauce, and Elisa used the break in the conversation to go up and place her own order.

"So what brings you so far from home?" Iris asked when she got back, curious, as she dipped one wing into some ranch dressing. Delicious.

"And still only halfway there. I'm on vacation, using the time to visit my sister in Arizona."

"Don't like flying?"

Elisa shook her head, "Flying's great." She grinned, half-laughing at an unspoken joke, "But I like road-trips as well. Occasionally. When you're a willing participant," she stipulated. Then, upon further reflection, she shrugged, "As long as the road takes me back to Manhattan, I'm happy."

"That sounds like a story."

"What can I say? Road trips have grown on me - you never know what you'll encounter or who you'll meet. Case in point," she toasted Iris with her glass.

"Have you been to very many places?" Iris _really_ wanted to know why Elisa had specified 'willing participant,' but maybe they didn't know each other well enough for that... (which didn't mean Iris couldn't fish around with innocuous questions. Besides, as someone who'd never left the Midwest, she was always curious about other places and cultures.)

Elisa chuckled, "More than I can count, and not all of them on purpose."

"Oh?" Iris encouraged. This was very promising, her reporter instincts buzzing.

"At the time, I didn't consider myself the adventuring type, but I think I did alright for myself. This happened back when I was about your age, or a little older." She pulled a wry face, "Geez, now I feel old." she laughed the thought away, "Anyway, we made a trip to... England, on family business for a close friend of mine. Had about as much drama as most family reunions, but with more Shakespeare. So my friend, his daughter, and I were on our way home from this trip, but we kept getting turned around and side-tracked - like, really side-tracked, Odyssey-level detours, not even kidding. Oh, but get this: he hadn't known he _had_ a daughter; they'd just met.

"At first, he was very 'it takes a village to raise a child,' which, you wouldn't think it would be a problem, except she wanted to get to know her father, and he kept insisting that the - that everyone in the family was equally her parent. Don't worry - he got his head on straight eventually," she reassured to Iris' disbelieving expression. "So they were having a bonding experience, or trying to, and I'm just hoping we get home in one piece. Which we did." She sighed, "Wasn't it Madeleine L'Engle who said that the best part of going away is coming home again? Or something like that."

It was another twenty minutes before Elisa's reuben sandwich arrived, during which time she regaled Iris with stories of the places she'd been to, at one time or another. There were some unusual pauses and obvious self-edits in some of her stories, but Iris didn't press (this time); after all, they'd only just met, and she didn't want to be seen as merely a nosy journalist.

"Well, that's enough of the Maza World Tour. Besides, I can't eat and talk at the same time. Tell me more about what's up with you."

Iris thought for a moment, rolling her glass between her hands. Caitlin wasn't here to discuss her worries, but that didn't mean her worries had gone away; while she wasn't one to dwell on things, neither did she want to bottle it up. And maybe unloading all this on her wasn't what Elisa meant by her question, but... "I'm worried about my friend, and my dad might be keeping things from me, and I think they could be related." Elisa made an encouraging gesture, so Iris continued. "When my mom got sick, I was really little. Maybe I was too little to understand. But in hindsight, my dad downplayed it. A lot. He didn't know how to have a conversation about dying with a four-year-old, so he mostly didn't, and just lied about how serious it was; I was just a little girl, I wouldn't have even known to call him out on it. And now more and more often, he's got the same forced smile on his face when he greets me. It's like he thinks I can't tell when he's worried about something."

"And the friend you mentioned, are they...?"

"That's the thing. Barry - my best friend, we grew up together - he got struck by lightning last year and was in a coma for nine months. I know, I know, it sounds unbelievable."

"Stranger things have happened." Elisa mused sagely, with a wry twist of her lips.

"He's awake now, but all the while he was unconscious, my dad didn't try to conceal or downplay anything. We were right there, side-by-side, dealing with it together. We both got the straight talk from his doctor at the same time - Caitlin, the one who was supposed to meet me here. It's only since Barry's woken up that Dad's started insisting that everything is fine. It makes me worried that something more serious is going on. Nobody even told me Barry was dealing with lightning psychosis until a few days ago!" she finished emphatically, jabbing one of Elisa's stolen french fries for emphasis.

Elisa chewed thoughtfully before answering, "If there's one thing I know, it's that you can't take anything at face value; you have to look deeper to find the truth. Now, I don't know your dad, but I know a bit about keeping secrets. Sometimes what seemed like a really good idea at the time is selfish and stupid in hindsight. My partner eventually forgave me - but first he tried to run my car off a cliff. He was really ticked off, with good reason. And that opened my eyes to how badly I'd hurt him with my lies. So if you find out your dad only has stupid, selfish reasons, you give him hell for me, okay? But preferably in a way that doesn't risk your own neck," she added ruefully. "And as an officer of the law, I have to ask you to try to keep the property damage to a minimum."

"Sounds… drastic. I only have a hunch, there aren't even any outward signs that anything's wrong."

"Hey, a hunch is a hunch. Us cops and journalists, we've got that in common. But I have a reputation back home for being impulsive, so maybe you should take any of my advice with a grain of salt."

They kept talking until ten; Iris had to be at Picture News early the next day, so as much as she'd like to stay, she knew she had to get going. They exchanged contact info, and gathered up their things, ready to part ways.

"So, what's there to do around here at this time of night?" Elisa had her hands tucked into her pockets once again.

"Uhh, not much more than what we were just doing. The bars are clubs are the only things open this late, and they typically close around two."

Elisa tucked her hair behind her ear, and sighed, "... I miss New York; the City That Never Sleeps is a good fit for a cop who usually doesn't get to bed until sunrise." At that moment, her phone began to chime. "Hold on one sec, I gotta take this."

She took a few steps to the side to answer the call, "Broadway, what's up?... Well, can't you ask Brooklyn?... Because I'm not in town at the moment, you know that. Take Lex, he'll... yes, I know that. _You_ called _me_ , remember?" she pressed a hand to her forehead in exasperation. "No, no, I'm listening... Look, Broadway, if you want to throw Maggie a surprise birthday party I'm all for it, but I can't help you plan when I'm halfway across the country. And that's really something you'll have to work out with my brother, anyway..." a longer pause "Which is why I told you to take Lexington. ... Don't use up everyone's cell minutes, we can talk more when I get back. Good luck."

Iris smirked, amused, "So, Broadway, Brooklyn, Lexington... I'm sensing a theme."

"They're brothers," she shrugged, "I guess I've gotten so used to them, it doesn't seem odd to me anymore. Then again, I'm from Manhattan; it takes a lot of weirdness before we even begin to notice."

Iris tapped her chin thoughtfully, "Well, if you stick around, I think Central City might surprise you."

"How's that?"

"What, and ruin the surprise?" Iris liked Elisa; she really liked her a lot. In the back of her mind, the part of her that was still a little girl thought wistfully of playing matchmaker and hooking her up with her dad, but she knew that would never work (not least because Elisa was very clearly a New Yorker through and through, and would never consent to move to the Midwest). Oh well. At least she promised she'd try to stop by Central City again on her return trip.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two have a lot of common ground (Elisa also majored in psychology in college, maybe that's typical of law enforcement?), that I thought it's be neat to let them meet. I picture her taking a very maternal big-sister role with Iris, sort of like her interactions with Angela.
> 
> After all, why should Barry get to be the only one to have long conversations with strangers? Iris just doesn't need to literally bump into them first ;)


	19. Supreme Ultimate Boxing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe's overprotective drive to make sure Barry knows how to defend himself takes a somewhat silly turn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set early season 1. Based on Chapter 2 - 'Fighting Chance' (i.e. Joe's motivation to see Barry learn self-defense) but does not share a continuity

Barry sat cross-legged on the floor, trying very hard to relax. He was supposed to be clearing his mind, slowing his heart-rate and breathing...

... _yeeaah_ , that wasn't really an option for him anymore, because faster metabolism equaled increased metabolic requirements (of which oxygen was one), no matter that he was currently at rest. Also? His thoughts ran  _fast_ , so 'clearing his mind' was a job and a half.

He quashed the urge to open his eyes and tried to focus on breathing silently, so at least maybe no one else in the class would notice that he wasn't breathing correctly. And now that he was thinking about breathing, it felt really weird to do so. Like, it suddenly didn't feel involuntary anymore, and what if he got distracted and forgot to breathe?! This was supposed to be meditative? How did that work?

He opened his eyes a crack. Everyone else was looking very serene.

Meditation was definitely more than breathing slowly. Probably. (Caitlin would know more.)

At the beginning of his first class, the instructor had made some cryptic comment about the state of his chi. Barry wasn't sure what  _chi_  was, exactly, beyond what he'd picked up from  _The Last Airbender_  (and  _serenity_  was a firefly-class ship in the Whedon'verse), but meditation, at least, could be observed as an increase in alpha and theta brain-wave activity with an with an EEG machine. Which he didn't have on him, at the moment ( _obviously_ , because who carted several thousand dollars worth of electroencephalography equipment around with them?). Thus bringing him back to his first problem - how to know when he was meditating correctly.

It was probably one of those, 'he'd know it once he felt it' sorts of things, which was not at all helpful. Well, if he couldn't (technically) manage mediation, maybe he could at least get into the right frame of mind for class? Said frame of mind being  _extremely slow -_  slow by anyone's standards, not just Barry's.  _Argh!_  (this really wasn't working, and it was totally Joe's fault)

Joe had emphasized learning to do self defense  _slowly_  in order to learn it right, but come on! There was slow, and then there was glacial, and when Barry had pointed this out, Joe had pulled some bogus 'Art of War' line about turning weakness into strength. But being slow was  _not_ Barry's weakness (he was The Fastest Man Alive), so why the heck did Joe have to sign him up for t'ai chi classes anyway?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't mean to say that T'ai chi is silly or ridiculous! (there's a t'ai chi instructor in my immediate family - so, in feeling pressured to not completely misrepresent the art, I realize I mostly avoided describing it at all. umm...)
> 
> Instead, I called it a 'silly turn' because it is known in popular culture for being practiced very slowly (for the development of balance, strength, and health. [And it's true that while it's global popularity has spread, fewer people study t'ai chi for the martial aspects]), and the mental image of The Fastest Man Alive struggling to slow down amused me :D
> 
> Title comes from one translation of t'ai chi ch'uan (there are several variations)


	20. Philae

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Team Flash celebrates the comet landing by being complete science nerds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set between 1x05 Plastique and 1x06 The Flash is Born. Specifically, set November 12, 2014
> 
> Dedicated to Science. So much science-love in this

**07:55:43 Central Standard Time**

Barry arrives early at S.T.A.R. Labs. He might have arrived even earlier, since he'd woken up around 5 in the morning and been unable to fall back asleep due to overwhelming anticipation, but good manners won out in the end. He didn't think the others would appreciate such an early morning wake-up call, and hanging out at the lab alone didn't sound very appealing.

Today, if all goes well, history is going to be made.

He's already arranged to have the day off work, to be better able to appreciate the moment and spend it with his team (he has a team!), who won't think the only Rosetta of significance is a carved piece of granite (to be fair, the Rosetta Stone is also awesome and fantastic, and the namesake of the spacecraft, but today it's the spacecraft Barry's really interested in).

Early this morning the Philae lander was launched from the Rosetta probe above comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, armed with two landing anchors (harpoons!) and as much sensory and analytical equipment its scientists could pack into its tiny one-cubic-meter chassis.

* * *

**08:01:06 CST**  [1.5 hours until landing]

He realizes too late that he doesn't have a way to get into the lab, having left his key card inside the previous day, so he's waiting in the parking garage, running laps around the empty space when Wells is the next to arrive.

He waits patiently for Wells to finish disengaging his chair from its spot in front of the modified steering column and back it down the automated ramp, and by 'patiently' he means 'zipping from side to side,' because cellphone signal is a crapshoot in the cement cave that is the garage, and what if there's been  _news?_  There's less than two hours left until the landing!

* * *

**08:05:37 CST**  [1.5 hours until landing]

Caitlin is the last to arrive (now they can get this party started!)

They take advantage of the multiple display screens in the Cortex to bring up the relevant media feeds: a live webcast from the European Space Agency's mission control in Germany; live-updating blogs from world news sites; the pertinent Twitter feeds - from Philae, from ESA Operations, from # _CometLanding_ ; Randal Munroe's excellent webcomic; and the first season of Star Trek (original series) queued up and ready to boldly go on the far right screen.

* * *

**08:20:18 CST** [1 hour 15 minutes until landing]

Armed robbery at a gas station.

At 8:20 in the morning,  _really?_

(Argh,  _criminals_ )

* * *

**08:23:15 CST** [1 hour 15 minutes until landing]

_Coffee, need coffee_

Barry can now confirm that 8:20 in the morning is much too early to attempt armed robbery (logistically, there isn't even that much cash in the registers at this time), and, also, it is too early to be running around  _stopping_  idiotic armed robbers. It took him over two minutes to get there and resolve the situation!

Hence: coffee

(Since he's now out and about, he might as well pick up extra coffees for the others)

* * *

**08:42:42 CST**  [55 minutes until landing]

In the restless pauses between news updates, Barry trains his coordination and accelerated depth perception. In other words, Cisco and Caitlin flick pieces of popcorn around the room for Barry to catch in his mouth. Dr. Wells comes up with the idea to make popcorn launchers out of rubber bands, and the  _training exercise_  really takes off from there.

* * *

**09:00:21 CST**  [35 minutes until landing]

Philae is thirty-five minutes away from landfall, and the news will reach the Earth twenty-eight minutes after that (Deep Space is  _deep_ ). No amount of cajoling or wheedling will get Dr. Wells to share more than generalities about his memories of the first Apollo mission (One giant leap for Mankind!), or any of the other lunar missions.

He does get more engaged in a hypothetical discussion of how to build a station on the moon.

Which. Is just. (he has no words)...

_The_  Harrison Wells is giving a private lecture on  _moon colonies_ , and Barry can scarcely believe this is his life now.

* * *

**09:16:03 CST**  [20 minutes until landing]

Four-alarm fire at a clothing boutique.

No casualties, thank goodness.

(He'll leave it to the fire marshal to figure out how that one got started; it doesn't make much sense to him)

* * *

**09:20:52 CST** [15 minutes until landing]

Somehow (Barry can't remember how), the conversation turns to African migratory locusts, and then Cisco asks about forensic entomology (Barry's knowledge is piecemeal; the CCPD doesn't have an entomologist on staff, so they have to send their maggots to a lab in St. Louis), which leads to carcass beetles, and from there to carrion flowers (because, while Barry is not a trained entomologist, he's nevertheless intensely curious, and carrion flowers are  _neat_ ). And the mimicry of those plants reminds Caitlin of her 6th grade science project, and that leads to a discussion of everyone's science project, ever, and Barry has never felt such a sense of belonging before.

* * *

**09:24:47 CST** [10 minutes until landing]

The last ten minutes until the landing are spent constantly refreshing pages, seeking every scrap of news available.

(On the  _Enterprise_ , Dr. McCoy reveals that there is no trace of salt - no trace at all - in the body they recovered from planet M-100-13)

* * *

**09:36:02 CST** [Landing?]

Yes or no. There's nothing to do now but wait (so, no different from the rest of their day, really), wait for the news to come.

Somehow, that the possibility of success  _exists_  now, in this moment, while a moment ago it was merely a probability, feels enormous.

Did we put a lander on a comet? Yes or no?

Barry looks up at the ceiling and imagines he can strip away the roof and see the sky, the stars. He imagines the incredible distance between himself on Earth and Philae on 67P. He can't hold the distance in his head; it's too big. (Also, maybe it's in the other direction, and he should be looking towards his feet).

Somewhere out there, a journey of ten years through the solar system will have come to an end, for better or for worse.

(He remembers a story from his childhood, about a prince from asteroid B-612)

_[Look up at the sky. Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? Has the sheep eaten the flower? And you will see how everything changes . . .]_

* * *

**09:40:12 CST** [Time until confirmation: 25 minutes]

There's only so much relentless refreshing a person can do in one day, so while they keep one eye out for breaking news, they eventually return to amusing diversions to keep themselves occupied.

Cisco brings out a bag of tootsie pops and, with Barry's super-speed (and super-metabolism, thank god), they settle once and for all how many licks it takes to get to the center. (341, with a standard deviation of 12.7) (and  _ugh_ , a statistically significant sample size of tootsie pops is  _way too many_ tootsie pops - Barry doesn't even want to  _look_  at the pile of paper stems left behind).

* * *

**09:51:35 CST**  [Time until confirmation: 15 minutes]

Barry's sugar rush is so fleeting, he wonders if anyone else even noticed it

* * *

**10:01:24 CST**  [Time until confirmation: 5 minutes]

They re-enact the landing (can you re-enact something that is currently happening/already happened/will happen? - lag time sucks for verb tense), which primarily consists of Barry and Cisco throwing twizzler-harpoons at each other from across the room (and marveling at the skill it takes to make a soft landing on a 2.5-mile-wide comet travelling 83,000 miles per hour, 317 million miles away).

* * *

**10:07:28 CST**  [Landed!]

_YEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!_

* * *

**10:09:35 CST** [Landing confirmed]

Barry's phone rings; it's Felicity. "We landed on a comet!" he exclaims in place of a more typical greeting.

"Oh, thank god!" Her answer is equally atypical, but the story quickly becomes clear; evidently, no-one in Starling City is properly appreciative at 8 o'clock in the morning about the History That Just Happened, Seriously, That Programming Was Awesome ( _especially_  those that are still asleep due to generally-nocturnal vigilante habits - the clear exception being Ray Palmer, who is enthusiastic to the point of being completely unavailable, tied-up as he is in conference calls and hammering out the details of ways to improve nitrogen thrusters).

Caitlin is making gestures towards his phone and Cisco is hanging on to every word, so Barry asks if Felicity wants to switch to Skype instead; they pull up the video chat on the nearest monitor, the one with the microphone, and everyone basks in the mutual appreciation of human ingenuity and the incredible feats mankind can achieve. More than that, this will be an incredible opportunity to  _learn,_ will be so much more than sticking a metaphorical flag in a piece of space rock. Because that space rock is  _debris left over from the formation of the solar system five billion years ago_.

And how cool is that?

* * *

**10:43:10 CST**

So, since Barry's already taken time off from his day job (and he's not entirely sure what Cisco and Caitlin and Dr. Wells actually  _do_  when he's not around), it only makes sense to keep the party going.  _Especially_ now that they've got actual, confirmed good news to celebrate.

They bring the ping-pong table back. They've yet to devise a fair and balanced handicap for Barry; early experiments with blindfolds were a resounding failure, but requiring Barry to play left-handed while standing on one leg shows promise (in that he only wins by a six-point margin, instead of his typical lockout games).

* * *

**11:03:36 CST**

Word just came in - harpoons definitely did not deploy. Aw, man!

* * *

**11:04:09 CST**

Dr. Wells starts making pointed comments that, as fun as this all is, perhaps Barry could get a little speed training done before lunch.

And it  _is_  a good idea, until Cisco, appointing himself Barry's 'motivational coach', stands in front of him making increasingly ridic faces until, laughing, Barry falls off the back of the treadmill.

Caitlin, with a frosty glare, sends them both down to the storeroom to get replacement boxes. But seeing all the packing peanuts scattered around gives Barry  _ideas_ , so they build forts out of the new boxes and bust out the Nerf guns - Cisco is amazing-prepared for any eventuality, it's awesome - and they even manage to convince Caitlin to take part.

(Dr. Wells mostly just gives up on getting anything productive done today)

* * *

**11:58:02 CST**

By noon, their competitive tendencies have been formalized into an official scoreboard, keeping a running 'points' tally on a whiteboard that they wheeled in from a disused conference room.

(Dr. Well's paper airplane scores the highest on both aesthetics and functionality, with its unique, almost bat-like design.

Meanwhile, Barry wins gold in the Who Can Name More First-Generation Pokemon competition. Caitlin scores points for being able to name the most Nobel laureates, while Wells gets bonus points for having  _met_  the most laureates.

Cisco wins at Jenga. Three times.)

* * *

**12:06:45 CST**

oooh, pictures from Rosetta!

* * *

**12:22 CST**

Time for Tactical Environmental Assessment with Respect to Hostiles (a.k.a. hide-and-seek), with Wells on the comms to announce any new updates immediately, seriously, the second they happen, this information is critical.

Caitlin pwns everybody.

* * *

**1:08 pm**

Chalupas!

* * *

**1:19 pm**

Airplane-on-a-treadmill argument begins

* * *

**1:40 pm**

Airplane-on-a-treadmill argument is forced to conclude with no clear winner

* * *

**1:58 CST / 7:58 UTC**

The final message from ESA mentions the possibility of having landed twice (Philae bounced, in other words). They thank everyone for their support, and promise a status update tomorrow, when Rosetta re-establishes contact with Philae after dipping below the horizon of the comet.

All in all, a pretty fantastic day

(in the end, the points don't matter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, pretty much my Ode to the Spirit of Intrepid Exploring and Also Nerdly Pursuits :D
> 
> Because if I had free run of an advanced scientific lab with no clearly defined long-term projects, there would be so many novel forms of ridiculousness we'd be able to patent them and secure a new source of income.
> 
> In other news, I almost forgot to convert EST of xkcd's frame-by-frame breakdown to Central Time. And then I forgot to take Daylight Savings Time into account, converting between UCT (Coordinated Universal Time) and CST, since there was a switch between now and November. Really screwed with my timeline, which is why it all sorts of drifts away after twelve o'clock.
> 
> For the purposes of this fic, I continue to map Starling City to somewhere on the west coast, since they were able to reach Lian Yu from the wreck of the Queen's Gambit, and it seems unlikely to me that they would have started on the east coast and then gone all the way around to Panama get to the Pacific Ocean for a pleasure cruise, when at that point the Bahamas would have been much closer.
> 
> This means converting to Pacific Standard Time, two hours behind Barry in Central City. Just thought I'd clear that up. (unless I made it more muddled? if so: whoops)
> 
> I grabbed the tootsie pop lick number from a study by Purdue University, in which they built a 'licking machine' to test the age-old question (I completely made up the SD, though). They also had twenty volunteers assume the challenge, and got a much lower result - 252 licks averaged (it is reportedly very difficult to resist biting). The University of Michigan, Swarthemore Junior High School, and likely others have also conducted experiments, and the results vary a lot - the range of averages is something like 140 to 410, and more recently scientists at New York University created a fluid mechanics model that calculated 1000 licks.


	21. Sneezy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short story about sneezing, inspired by real-life events

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set post-season one

When a person sneezes, saliva and mucus is ejected from the mouth and nose at a speed of approximately 224 miles per hour. This means that, if he wanted to (and it is an  _extremely_  hypothetical 'if' because really,  _why would he want to?_ ) Barry could outrun his own snot (he doesn't want to).

Barry blew his nose forcefully into a tissue, then dropped the used Kleenex into his lab's biohazard bin (a practice which had started out as a little joke to amuse himself, but had since become habit. Besides, there was something vindictively satisfying in autoclaving the heck out of the germs that'd made him miserable).

And he  _was_  miserable, had been since he'd dragged himself out of bed in the morning. His super-fast metabolism could crunch up toxins like popcorn, but it could not, apparently, do much against the common cold. Intellectually, this made sense, since producing all the T-cells in the world at superhuman rates wouldn't do diddly-squat without the right antigens, and those… those…

He thumped his head down on his desk, too tired to finish the thought. Intellectually, it might make sense, somewhere in his memory, but that didn't help him cope with the symptoms. He felt another sneeze coming on, and turned into his elbow without lifting his head.

"Gesundheit."

"Iris!" he startled, nearly falling out of his chair, "What are you doing here?"

"Stopped by to get a quote from Singh for Picture News – but I think the real question is what are  _you_  doing here? You sound terrible."

"I… may have used up all my sick days."

"You were in a coma! I can't believe they would - " she looked ready to march down to give personnel management a piece of her mind, so Barry hurried to correct her.

"No, no! I, uh, well, I used up the last of my sick days to go to Starling City, just before… everything happened." Only a year ago, and it felt like two lifetimes. "And I didn't get it approved ahead of time, so I couldn't use vacation time – also, I'm pretty sure I'm out of vacation time as well…" He'd had a habit of running (figuratively, back then) across the country, searching for the weird and strange (it had not left him much time for actual vacations). Now, he'd mostly stopped doing that, barring the occasional jaunt to Starling… but whatever little time-off he'd managed to accumulate since he'd woken up was swiftly eaten up by Flash emergencies – it wasn't as if he could put his day-job ahead of  _saving lives_.

"Barry, if you're sick, you're sick, and you're only going to prolong it if you push yourself."

"It's not  _that_  bad," he protested, before his next sneeze, insufficiently covered, sent his board skidding back several feet.

Iris raised an unimpressed eyebrow, and crossed her arms. "I think Singh is going to notice if you keep sneezing at superspeed. Heck, I think even  _Snodgrass_  might notice, and he has yet to notice the internet."

Sniffling, Barry conceded the point. "I'll just go talk to Singh, then. Caitlin could probably write me a doctor's note…"

"And I'll give you a lift." She hoisted him out of his chair and steered him out of the lab, "no way you're running anywhere in your condition. Probably sneeze yourself into the river, or something equally ridiculous. And I'd be obligated to report it, you know I would – could be front page news, if there's pictures."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, a recent (2013) study by Dr. Julian Tang of the Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health debunked the oft-quoted 100 meters per second sneeze-speed that William Firth Wells came up with in the mid-century. Firth's number was based on the speed at which air must flow over a liquid to form sneeze-sized droplets, whereas Dr. Tang's experiment used six volunteers, a high-speed camera, a concave mirror, LED beams, and pepper. Tang found that sneezes reach a high of about 10 miles per hour, which is about the same velocity as a cough.
> 
> (Stupid fact-checking impulse. Crush my high-velocity sneeze dreams, why don't you…)
> 
> So, either Barry is unaware of recent developments in sneeze-science, Barry ascribes to the higher-velocities alleged by other sneeze researchers, or Barry lives in a comic-book universe where the laws of physics are a little askew, and everyone sneezes at 224 miles per hour. You decide!
> 
> (am now tempted to write one-shots for the rest of Snow White's Seven Dwarfs. 'Bashful' sounds especially fun, though I think 'Happy' might be a little vague…)
> 
> In case you were wondering, 'autoclaving' means using extreme heat to sterilize. An autoclave uses high-pressure steam, typically at least 121 degrees Celsius at 15 psi, to kill any viruses and bacteria, rendering biological waste safe to dispose. And yeah, as a CSI, Barry would be working with human blood and tissue samples, so he's got a biohazard bin.  
> Other, unrelated sneeze facts (credit to WebMd):
> 
> *Sneezes start in your nerves, but because the signal can take slightly different paths going to and from the brain, different people can sneeze in different circumstances. Some, for instance, might sneeze while plucking their eyebrows by setting off a nasal nerve in the face, while others (1 in 3) sneeze in sunshine due to light sensitivity.
> 
> *You don't sneeze in your sleep – the necessary nerves are also dozing
> 
> *World Record Sneezing-Spree: 978 days, set by Donna Griffiths of Worcestershire, England
> 
> *Iguanas sneeze more often and more productively than any other animal. It's is how they rid their bodies of certain salts that are the normal byproduct of their digestive process. (my response: What? Even more than penguins? Also, I'm pretty sure they mean marine iguanas – which isn't to say that other iguanas don't have wonderful sneezes, but I'm just skeptical that they can match the output of iguanas of the Galapagos, who have to drink saltwater (like the above-mention penguins, and other marine vertebrates) and then process the salt out of their blood, concentrating it in salt glands to be sneezed out explosively)


	22. The Memo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The CCPD issues its official policy re:The Flash. On an unrelated note, Singh and Barry have a heart-to-heart
> 
> (takes place after 1x19, Who Is Harrison Wells?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because why wouldn't the CCPD re-purpose the Flash task-force, which Eddie did get approved, to deal with other meta-humans? (more notes on CCPD's awareness or lack of awareness of meta-humans at the end)
> 
> Whoo! been a while since I wrote something substantive – I've been catching up on my reading, being generally busy, and feeling compelled to fact-check the life out of this. And then there wasn't any life left in it, so I decided to let go and accept it as it was, assumptions and all.

Barry was in the middle of analyzing the gas chromatography results for a recent drug case (there was a peak on the graph he was almost positive was an aldehyde, but he needed to cross-reference the NMR to be sure), when Joe grabbed him by the elbow and steered him from the lab, with a curt "Seminar, now."

Barry stumbled to keep his balance, "Joe, I got that memo; it's for first responders, and I'm just a lab rat."

"Oh, you'll want to be there for this one."

With those ominous words, Barry followed Joe down the stairs, to join the crowd of officers gathered in the bullpen, where Captain Singh was addressing the force.

"…now Detective Thawne, as former head of the now-disbanded Flash Task Force, will present the Department's official policy regarding sudden spatial displacement." Singh ceded the floor to Eddie, who took up a position next to a whiteboard - on which, Barry could see as he got closer, the words 'Sudden Spatial Displacement' were written across the top in blue marker, above a bulleted list.

"Uh, right." Eddie cleared his throat, "So, some of you have had interactions with the individual known as the Flash –  _and you can put your hands down_ ,  _there's no need to_  – " he cleared his throat again,"These interactions are primarily characterized by a sudden...'whoosh'" He grimaced; perhaps at the lack of articulation, or maybe he hadn't meant to add finger-quotes. "One moment, you're standing in one place, and the next you're someplace else entirely."

Several heads nodded along in the crowd. Barry tried to hide behind Joe as inconspicuously as possible, finding it very uncomfortable to be talked about in this way.

"For those who've experienced it, you know how disorienting it can be. For those who think I'm making all this up -  _have you been living under a rock, I mean seriously_  - "

The Captain cleared his throat, and Eddie - Detective Thawne - straightened his posture and reined in his less-professional remarks.

"Right." He coughed into his hand, and then gestured to the board behind him, "So a set of guidelines has been pulled together for what you should do should you find yourself in this situation.

"The number one thing to remember: Don't Panic." He tapped the first bulleted point. "The Flash is considered non-hostile - "

"Didn't he pulled you out of a car and start beating on you?" someone in the audience asked - it sounded like Sergeant Brennan. He had a penchant for snide comments (also, salmon and cream cheese bagels; his breath was always terrible).

Barry had to give Eddie credit; he kept an admirably straight face, under the circumstances. "There was a misunderstanding that has since been resolved," he answered blandly.

" _Is he doing this just to mess with me?_ " Barry hissed under his breath to Joe.

"Actually, he's been working on this since before he found out about you - the memo went out two weeks ago, remember?" Joe whispered back, nudging his attention back to the front.  _Right, this wasn't the time or place to be discussing Flash business_.

Except, it apparently  _was_  the time and place for  _everyone_  to be discussing Flash business. Just not the place for Barry-as-the-Flash to be talking about  _being_  the Flash (he made a mental note to read any inter-departmental memos more carefully in the future, even if they didn't appear to apply to him).

"The Flash has assisted the Department on multiple occasions, and has been a particularly big help in assisting civilians away from danger." Eddie continued. (Barry was pretty sure, by now, Eddie was avoiding looking in his direction). "Which brings us back to our first point - " he underlined 'Don't Panic' twice - "As an ally, the Flash is not likely to drop you into a hazardous situation. So the next thing to do…"

"Are we really condoning vigilantism?" That was probably Brennan's partner, Officer Chang.

To Barry's surprise, Captain Singh answered the question. "Citizen's arrest is legal in our state. As long as the crime is committed in his presence, the Flash can detain the offender. If he just-so-happens to be  _fast_  enough to bring his presence to crimes already in progress…" Singh shrugged, letting the conclusion go unspoken. He stepped back and waved Eddie to continue.

"So, there's no need to panic. Remember, the Flash will be moving you out of danger, so - "

"What about the time I was on my way to get coffee when suddenly I was moved into an alley, in front of a guy in his underwear?" Officer Paulson's Boston accent was particularly thick.

"In his..." his eyes flicked to Barry briefly (still trying to inconspicuously hide behind Joe with renewed subtle vigor), before he schooled his expression. "Ah, was the man - had he committed a crime?"

"He didn't have a permit for his handgun." Paulson conceded, "I think he might have been trying to mug someone; he matched the description of a reported purse snatcher in the area who could have escalated."

Eddie fumbled his notecards, trying to find his place, "Right, so, that illustrates our next point – assess your surroundings. If you haven't been moved out of danger, it's possible you've been moved to apprehend someone. You might find yourself facing someone known to be armed and dangerous; remind yourself that the Flash would not bring you onto the scene without securing it first. Um… in some cases there may not be an active warrant or even BOLO out for the person, so you should try to find out why they've been tied up. You can try asking them, which works with surprising frequency, or canvassing for nearby witnesses.

"Not all displacements are the result of saving your life or detaining criminals. Sometimes, you may be brought to an emergency situation, when more hands are needed to assist. So…" he added a third underline to 'Don't Panic.' "I really feel like I can't stress that enough," he mused, capping his marker. "Yes, you might find yourself suddenly in an emergency situation, but taking the time to properly orient yourself could save lives. Again, the Flash won't have placed you in  _immediate_  danger."

"To review: First, don't panic. Next, assess your surroundings. Locate any people in your vicinity, identify the likely reason the Flash moved you, and act accordingly, whether it's arresting or assisting." Eddie smiled broadly and seemed greatly relieved to have finished his presentation without any more interruptions.

"Thank you, Thawne." Captain Singh stepped forward, "These procedural points will be included in the next update to the handbook. If anyone has any suggestions, please speak to myself or Detective Thawne. For those of you who've experienced it, and have any advice for how to cope with the dizziness or nausea some have reported, by all means, we'd appreciate your input."

Barry leaned in to whisper to Joe, "Is it really that bad? Getting moved? I guess I don't really notice…"

"You wouldn't," he snorted. Then, seeing the devastated look in Barry's eyes, "It's the lack of forewarning that's the most shocking. Maybe you could let people know before you move them? That helps a lot."

Up in front, Singh wasn't finished speaking, "We don't know why things have gotten so crazy in our city. We don't know how the Flash can do the things he does, or how someone was able to impersonate our own Detective Thawne, or any of the other odd occurrences you've no doubt been hearing chatter about. So while we're on the topic, I just want to take this opportunity to say that if something inexplicable has happened to you, or if you yourself have done something inexplicable, you can come to me – "

_"What?!"_  Barry squawked, startled out of his slump.

"If I might finish –"

"I just - I've seen the third X-Men movie (though I wish I hadn't) and if you think –" Barry fumbled for a reason for his outburst, all eyes on him– Joe elbowed him in the ribs (too little, too late).

"Mr. Allen, my office." Singh gestured sharply.

But Barry just couldn't stop babbling (couldn't  _not_  argue the point, the consequences of which were too terrifying to contemplate), "You can't force people to come forward…"

At the end of his patience, Singh snapped out one last, "My office, now," before turning on his heel and striding away.

* * *

_"My office, now."_  David Singh didn't even wait to see if Allen was following him, he just marched to his office and held the door open pointedly. To his complete lack of surprise, when he turned back Joe was right behind him, with his ward trailing in his footsteps.

David rubbed at his forehead, and the mounting headache therein. "It's not the principal's office, Detective West; he doesn't need you to hold his hand."

Allen shuffled forward, "Oh, that's alright, I don't mind."

"Well, if it was your office, that'd be great. But it's not." He resisted the urge to tap his foot impatiently, because it  _wasn't_  a principal's office, and settled for glaring instead. Allen, after a frantic exchange of expressions with Joe, at last followed him inside alone.

David closed the door behind him, and moved to stand behind his desk. "Mister Allen." The sullen CSI twitched violently, "why don't you have a seat." He gestured to the chair in front of him, which the young man settled into as though it were about to bite him at any moment.

"Now, before you fly off the handle again, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. I am not now, nor will I ever be, requiring anyone with…  _abilities_  in this department to come forward."

"But you said…"

"You mean, those few words I managed to say before you interrupted?" He arched his brow, and Allen slumped lower in his chair, ears flushed pink.

David let the silence drag for a moment, during which time Allen continued to fidget in his seat, before changing tracks and asking, rhetorically, "Do you know what one of the most insidious aspects of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' was? It reinforced the message that homosexuality was something to be ashamed of, something to hide." He could see that while Allen agreed with him, he was confused about the sudden shift in the direction of their discussion. David leaned forward across his desk to hammer the point home, "So when I tell the officers on my force that if something unexplainable has happened to them, they 'can feel free to talk to me,' what I mean is that they don't have to be ashamed, or hide in fear. Do we have an understanding, Mr. Allen?"

"Oh. That - that makes sense." He nodded, staring at David in apparent shock.

"Had I been allowed to finish, I would have said that anyone with such abilities  _may come to me._  If there are any on the force, I want them to feel that they can be honest, that they shouldn't feel afraid to come forward, they don't need to worry about retribution."

"So, what you're saying is, you're... cool with meta-humans?" his fingers continued to twist themselves into knots in his lap.

David couldn't help drawing in a sharp breath; he let it out slowly, before affecting a casual tone, trying not to spook the kid who clearly had no idea what he'd just said, "'Meta-humans'? There's a word?"

_And dammit_ , but that expression was far too familiar to David, from all his years working interrogations, when the suspect first realized they'd given away something critical - a reaction that told David more than the slip-up itself, a reaction that he  _hated_ now because Barry wasn't a suspect, this wasn't an interrogation, and his purpose behind this discussion was to spread his message of non-judgement.

It clearly hadn't gotten through, if Allen looked ready to bolt.

"Allen...  _Barry,_  I've known you since you were a kid, since Joe took you in."

"Since you  _interrogated_  me." Which, yes, that was a fair accusation, since David had been present when he'd given his statement, even if he hadn't been the one asking questions. Still, he'd take a surly Allen over a panicked one any day.

"This is not an interrogation; I am not going to pry - I do mean that," he emphasized in the face of Allen's disbelieving scoff. "I told you at the beginning that I am not requiring any...  _meta-humans_  on the force to come forward. That means I'm not going to go seeking them out, either. The third X-Men movie was the worst of the trilogy, hands-down; I can't believe Rob liked it. But it does give us some idea of the direction public opinion is going to go. And that's why I want to nip this in the bud. If we as law enforcement can throw our support behind those who use their abilities for good, like the Flash... if we show that law and order in our city has not been overthrown… then that'll give peace a chance. Sparking off a witch-hunt would be counter-productive to that goal, don't you agree?"

"y-yeah."

David waited to see if he was going to say anything more, trying to decide if Allen really didn't want to talk, or if he was waiting for an explicit invitation.

" _Is_ there something you would like to say to me?"

Barry squirmed in his chair, his breathing kicking up. Then he exhaled gustily, and said, shakily, "I - I -" a deep breath, "I  _am_  meta-human." He blinked, wide-eyed, looking somewhat surprised. Gathering himself, he looked David steadily in the eye, challengingly. But David stood by his earlier assertion - he didn't need to know the details.

"Thank you for trusting me with this."

Allen let out an explosive breath of relief, his eyes looking a little glassy.

David stood up, "Why don't you stay here while I finish talking to everyone - unless you think you can keep a straight face while I go out there and finish what I was going to say before you interrupted?"

"Ah, no, that's fine; I'll stay." He was still very flustered, so it was probably for the best he wasn't returning to the bullpen where he'd have to be stoic.

"Good." David paused, one hand on the doorknob, "Maybe you could clear something up for me." He turned back and tried to broach the topic as diplomatically as possible, but in this case it was something he really needed to know. "Is the meta-human phenomenon - " he stopped, backtracked, decided it needed a more personal touch, tried again, "How did this happen, Allen? How the  _hell_  did this happen? When the Flash first appeared, I thought it was something he'd done to himself, but now more and more reports keep coming in, of all different weirdness - is there some common environmental contaminant they've all been exposed to, or what? Do you even know?" He hoped Allen knew - but if it  _was_  environmental, he might not have any idea...

"Ummm... I, I don't, um, I, uh..." Barry proved himself capable of fidgeting  _even more_  than he had been previously, which David had not thought possible. Time to let him off the hook before he really put his foot in it.

"We'll have to continue this discussion another time. I've left everyone waiting long enough."

"uh, y-yes, Sir."

Probably for the best; he had a lot to think about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> acronyms:  
> NMR - nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy  
> BOLO - be on the lookout 
> 
> So, the first half is very much, 'how might the CCPD respond to the Flash?' I just wanted to poke at the differences in how the Arrow and the Flash are treated by their respective cities. Granted, the Arrow began as a serial killer, so that likely had a major impact. Also, Oliver spends a lot of time actively hunting down individuals, whereas most of the work the Flash is seen doing by the police is responding to calls on the police scanner and helping people out of trouble. Most of his criminal arrests go to Joe or Eddie (except for the ones that go into his secret super-villain prison, but that's a separate issue).
> 
> As far as citizen's arrests go - it's not as cut-and-dry as I've presented it here. For one thing, I'm pretty sure the Flash would need to remain present for it to count, and they'd probably need his testimony in court. Good luck sending a subpoena to the fastest man alive.
> 
> Singh's definitely gone through a 180, from approving Eddie's stop-the-Flash task force to singing his praise - the turning point seems to be, unsurprisingly, the fight with Cold and Heatwave that also made the Flash public, after which he could be a little more open about his do-gooding.
> 
> But as far as other meta-humans go, the CCPD only ever faces two after the Flash is revealed in "Revenge of the Rogues" - everybody else is using technology. So there still isn't strong reason for them to suspect that humans-with-preternatural-abilities exist, or that the Flash is one of them. After all, he could have built himself a high-tech speed suit, and so here's where I'm allowing Singh to make correct assumptions, which I'd otherwise rather avoid. I just thought it'd be a neat conversation for him to have with Barry, and it tied in well with Eddie and his white-board.
> 
> Singh was fun to write. There's not a whole lot of background on him in the show; I built up the idea that he'd be 'cool with meta-humans' from his repeated adulation of the Flash, i.e. "luckily it's also a world where The Flash exists." He might not have an explanation for the Flash, but he doesn't fear or reject him for being Other.
> 
> Besides that, Singh's known to be snarky, but since he's Captain, you just have to sit there and let him dish it. Having a softer side via "his bark is worse than his bite" doesn't necessarily mean that you'll get to see it.


	23. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Barry's trapped in the dark, and it's his own fault

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set pre-series. Written for GrassGirl, who asked for Barry to be somehow injured while acting as a CSI. Also angst.
> 
> Warnings for mild swearing and mild gore (mostly just blood, but a little bit explicit). Look at the shiny new T rating!

Barry stood at the edges of the room, trying in vain to flag down one of the senior CSI's for instructions on what to do next.

He'd worked hard to become a genuine Crime Scene Investigator at an actual crime scene, busting his butt in the crime lab analyzing the evidence others brought back - to say nothing of the effort it took to convince  _Joe_  that he'd be perfectly safe, really, when was the last time a CSI got injured in the line of duty? It might even be safer than the lab; Julio's eyebrows still hadn't grown back yet.

But no sooner had he arrived at the site (a farmhouse just west of the city where their counterfeiter had set up his illicit printing press) than he'd been handed a camera and told to 'photograph the premises.'

Which he did, very meticulously and without complaining, but even still, it did not take him more than twenty minutes to finish taking pictures of the space. And no one was feeling particularly inclined to give him directions or point him in the right direction now that he'd finished. Barry had a hunch this supreme unhelpfulness had something to do with the fact that someone had spread the word about his blog last week. He'd been getting so much flak for it ever since, and even if he knew  _who_  had outed him as a conspiracy theorist (which he wasn't, not  _really_ ), there was no way to put that genie back in the bottle.

So he just had to suck it up and deal. He could do that (he'd had a lot of practice).

Barry turned and left the room, where everyone else was engaged in doing something useful. They wanted him to take pictures? Then he'd  _take_  pictures. After all, their search warrant was for the entire property. Barry could be more thorough.

In fact, as a general rule, Barry was  _extremely_  thorough. He had good reason to be. If 'all the evidence' pointed to his dad, then not  _all_  of the evidence had been found, because he was emphatically NOT guilty. They had to have missed something, some exonerating clue, and Barry was not going to make the same mistake.

After taking photographs of the rest of the rooms in the house, Barry stepped out onto the wrap-around porch for a breath of fresh air. His wheeled case was just where he left it, propped against the side of the house, unused.

A strong gust of wind slammed the frayed screen door shut behind him; Barry glanced reflexively at the sky, but no, the clouds were ordinary and gray, no greenish-brown hue that could herald tornadoes (there was a Tornado Watch currently in effect, but most people he knew, living this close to Tornado Alley, wouldn't start taking action until a credible Warning was issued (and even then, people sometimes ignored good sense and kept going about their day as usual).

The thought of tornadoes gave him an idea, though, and so, handle of his case firmly in hand, he set off across the scrubby, uneven grass to find - there! About fifty feet away from the house was the entrance to a storm cellar, a sturdy wooden door set into the ground.

He tugged on the handle, pulling with both hands, until, with an almighty heave, the heavy storm door opened. Its rusted hinges groaned at the abuse, and when the door was just past halfway open, they stuck fast and refused to budge any more.

Barry cast about for anything he could use to prop the door open, but didn't find anything in the open field. After a moment of indecision, he grabbed a small flat rock to wedge against the hinges, before peering into the depths.

Aged and warped wooden steps descended about seven feet down to a hard-packed dirt floor, and shelving units of some sort lined the walls. A thick layer of dust covered everything, and, remembering how overgrown the door had been, Barry had to concede that the cellar was unlikely to have been used for anything in the near past, let alone put to some nefarious purpose.

Still… He glanced back up at the house, where his so-called 'team' had made it abundantly clear they couldn't be bothered to give him the time of day. While he was out here, it couldn't hurt to take a look around, could it?

He made it all the way to the bottom step before the door slammed shut above him, plunging him into sudden darkness.  _Argh!_  Setting his case on the floor, he heaved out a frustrated breath as he tromped back up the steps. Should have known it was too windy to leave the door half-open like that.

Pushing against the door with his arms didn't do much - he wasn't surprised, upper body strength had never been his forte. He braced his back against the door and threw his weight against it, but all that accomplished was a sudden snap-crack as his right foot punched through the half-rotted step, dragging claws of agony up his leg; he pitched forward, further wrenching his foot, and slammed face-down into the remaining steps, which thankfully held.

He had a moment to be winded, and a moment to be shocked, but the next moment he was yelling, because  _damn_  did that hurt,  _Jesus Christ on crutches_  - There was good, empirical evidence that swearing played a role in pain relief, okay? So if he cussed out the floor, the door, the CCPD, telemarketers, and whoever invented stairs (seriously, bad idea), with his not-inconsiderable vocabulary of profanities (Barry'd spent a lot of time at the precinct, growing up. He'd picked things up, even if he rarely  _applied_  them), then it was all part of his pain management strategy. Really. Or it would be, if he could think straight.

With the door closed above him, it was dark in the cellar, and he couldn't see his foot where it was still stuck in the stairs. He groped blindly with one hand and felt for his ankle, slick with hot blood. There didn't seem to be anything currently embedded in or pinning his foot, so he gingerly lifted it and drew it towards him.

He couldn't tell how bad it was. He didn't  _think_  he was danger of bleeding out, but it would probably be a good idea to avoid moving around too much. Could he elevate it? Or bandage it? Or - it didn't feel sprained. (Correction: it didn't feel swollen to his probing fingers. What it  _felt_  like was a throbbing mass of agony, so...)

At what point did he need to start tearing up his shirt for bandages?

His head felt fuzzy. Was the blood loss that severe already? Oh, wait, he was lying on an incline on the stairs, blood was rushing to his head. That probably wasn't good either, even if it did mean his foot was already elevated.

Barry groaned and rolled over, before pulling himself up to a sitting position.

What he needed, what he really needed - besides to be out of this damnable cellar - was a little bit of light. But  _of course_  his phone had fallen out of his pocket somewhere, because that would be too easy. (The camera he'd been taking pictures with was broken, too.  _That_  was going to come out of his paycheck, he was sure. Of all the stupid ways to screw up, his first time out in the field…)

With the door closed above him, it was dark in the cellar. Not the absolute inky blackness of cave-darkness, but absolute enough that he couldn't see his hand in front of his face, and all around him were black shadows on top of darkness. His breathing hitched as his heart rate, already flooded with adrenaline from his fall, kicked up, even though there was no nearby threat.

He wasn't afraid of the dark - but he  _remembered_  being afraid, and shivered involuntarily.

He knew The Dark couldn't hurt him.

Still…

He wasn't exactly  _comfortable_  in pitch darkness either. It was unnerving, and he didn't like it. When he was younger, Barry had been afraid of the dark for an embarrassingly long time; he'd been thirteen before he stopped needing to have a light left on in order to sleep (still preferred to have a light on, if he was being honest). Before then, especially in those first few months after That Night, he'd needed Joe to stay up with him to keep the shadows at bay, until he fell into a fitful sleep. God, Joe had had the patience of a saint, putting up with all of Barry's insecurities.

But he was  _over_  that childhood fear, he was; there wasn't anything rational in it. If he could hear his heartbeat thumping in his ears, that was just because it was otherwise so quiet down here, wasn't it?

Light. Light was a sensible, logical plan.

If he couldn't get to his phone, wherever it was (and suddenly, groping blindly around the floor seemed like a really bad idea. There could be broken glass, rusty nails, new and exciting pathogens just waiting to jump into his body), then he'd have to find something else.

He kept a small penlight in his wheeled case - and he had some idea where he'd left that, just at the bottom of the stairs. Feeling around with his left foot, he managed to locate the hard side of his case, and then it was a relatively simple matter to fumble with the clasp and get it open.

The inside of his case was well-organized; he knew this intellectually. However, the contents didn't  _feel_  particularly organized to his groping hands - those where his gloves, yes, and that boxy thing was… it held evidence bags, he thought. Something rattled - sounded like a hard plastic container, what did he have that needed - ? His fingerprinting kit was in a zippered case, it couldn't be that… Aha!

His fingers closed around a slim metal cylinder, which he pulled out triumphantly. Barry found the switch and - oh. It was his ultraviolet light, which meant its light was, like, 90% invisible. Not a terrific light source, he thought, casting the dim blue-purple beam about - oh, whoa! His blood was  _everywhere!_ He stared at the brightly fluorescing patches on the stairs, his hands, his clothes, smaller bright dots where he'd  _dripped_ …

He traced the path his bodily fluids made with morbid fascination, before shaking himself back to the task at hand.

Calling for help seemed like the most sensible thing to do, but looking around, he didn't see his phone anywhere. That realization gave him an unpleasant jolt, but…

No need to panic. Deep breaths (it felt like breathing through a bendy straw, but he wasn't making wheezing noises, so he was probably fine. Right? Right. Perfectly fine. He'd just need to call for help the old fashioned way.

He drew a deep breath - of musty, dusty air - and promptly coughed it back out again.

Okay, smaller breaths this time.

_"HEELLLP!"_  his calls grew increasingly less articulate - he just needed to be heard, right, so volume was a priority over enunciation - until eventually it was nothing but long string of vowels that petered off into another coughing fit. Well, that wasn't going to work.

Time for Plan B: Find a Way to Get Himself Out.

There was a toolbox just to the left of the nearest set of shelves, and that seemed like a good place to start. A crowbar, even one of those short claw-foots, would be a step in the right direction.

He crawled over on two hands and one knee, careful to keep his injured foot off the dirty floor, and as far away as possible from the pale, luminescent patches along the wall that he knew were _not_  blood, and were, in fact, evidence of a healthy rat population. (ugh)

The toolbox, when he finally reached it, had a padlock on it. Barry was not even surprised, the way his luck was going this day - hell, this whole  _week_  had been one long attempt to grind him into dust.

He did have a totally-legal set of lock picks, one of the perks of working for the police, but he'd lost his tension wrench a while back, and he'd never been all that great at picking locks to begin with.  _Iris_  was better at picking locks with a  _bobby pin_  (when they were younger, they'd practiced on Joe's handcuffs, without his knowledge, and the statute of limitations probably hadn't run out on that yet, so it was imperative that  _Joe never find out_. For like, at least another seven years).

Even if he managed to find a crowbar to force his way into the toolbox - well! That would mean having a crowbar, wouldn't it, and then he'd just apply it directly to the door.

It was like some sort of logic paradox, except not really, because Barry didn't even know that there  _was_  a crowbar in the box, and he also wasn't entirely sure where he'd get the leverage to  _use_ a crowbar, if he had one. Which he didn't.

There was a thump from above, and a groan as the door was hauled back on its hinges. Barry blinked at the sudden influx of light.

"Barry, you there?" a very welcome and very familiar voice called down.

"I'm down here, Chyre!" Barry called back, "I hurt my foot."

Chyre descended the stairs carefully, stepping close to the edge where there was more support. Barry couldn't see his expression when Chyre reached the broken step, but he saw his face when he connected the broken step and splotches of blood (which didn't look nearly as large in the normal light of day) with Barry, crouched on the floor and favoring his ankle. It was the face of a man having a very brief, controlled moment of panic. Barry grinned up at him, trying to set him at ease.

"I've been looking everywhere for you," Chyre chided, his shoulders relaxing.

Barry's immense relief upon hearing those words was a little disproportionate, in his own opinion. Still, it wasn't unreasonable to be glad someone cared enough to notice when he was gone.

"Are you going to be able to hobble, if I prop you up?"

"Um, yeah, should - I think so?" Barry stammered, still grinning, because Rescue! Rescue was very, very nice.

After a bit of maneuvering, and some tricky moments navigating the stairs, Barry returned to the surface, using Chyre as a very patient, very accommodating crutch. He paused for a moment to catch his breath once he was back on solid ground.

"You're not going to tell Joe about this, are you?" Barry's one small consolation was that Joe had taken off early for a doctor's appointment, and wouldn't be witness to Barry's curiosity-induced predicament.

Chyre raised both grey brows. "And how, exactly, are you going to explain that?" he asked, nodding to the bloody mess around Barry's ankle. The drying blood on his leg was becoming tacky, and his blood-sodden soaked sock chafed. So yeah, all in all, not something he'd be able to hide from his parental unit.

"Oh! My phone!"

Chyre sighed, squeezed more firmly as he steered Barry back to the house, as though he thought he'd try and go back into that pit immediately for his phone "I'll go back, get the rest of your stuff as well, but first things first: You. Doctor. Now."

"Yessir."

In the end, Chyre drove him to the same hospital where Joe was getting his stitches taken out, because Chyre was Joe's partner first and foremost, Barry should have remembered that, of course he wouldn't take Barry's side in anything (except those times when they were kids and he'd sneak them small candies under Joe's nose).

Joe was horrified when he saw Barry's leg, and then he was pissed, and then he insisted on driving Barry home to his house instead of Barry's own, perfectly suitable apartment (though, on reflection, maybe not so suitable, because the elevator was currently out, and  _stairs,_ ugh). He planted Barry on the couch and  _glared_  at him, and Barry, knowing when he was beaten, surrendered.

It wasn't as though he had any plans to get up and move around anytime soon.

He could hear Joe in the kitchen, making what smelled like it might be soup - and what was up with that, he was injured, not  _sick_.

Well… it  _did_  smell good.

(Joe had had three stitches taken out. Barry had needed to have two put in. When Iris found out, she threw her hands in the air in exasperation, and checked to make sure they still had plenty of antibiotic ointment.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my first foray into writing deliberate angst. Possibly it comes across more as whump *shrugs*
> 
> Assumption that knowledge of Barry's blog is somewhat widespread around the CCPD comes from Eddie' exchange with Joe in the pilot: "sounds like one of those 'wide world of weird' cases Barry's obsessed with." "he's not obsessed" "guess you haven't read his blog." Eddie's the new guy, and he already knows this about Barry? (don't think Iris would have told him, she'd respect Barry's privacy)
> 
> Lock-picking Iris inspired by Lois Lane. It's a useful life skill!


	24. The Follow-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Singh and Barry finally get to finish their conversation. (Immediately follows "The Memo")

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set after 'Who Is Harrison Wells,' but before 'Grodd Lives' – so Barry doesn’t know that Eiling knows. David Singh POV
> 
> This chapter dedicated to Megan, for some well-timed nudges :) Thank you!

When David returned to his office at the conclusion of the presentation, Allen had already disappeared (an unsurprising turn of events). David did not want to draw attention to Allen’s earlier reaction, so he didn’t go to check on him in his lab, and when he cast about for Joe to send up in his stead, to make sure that the kid was really alright, he found that the man was already absent from the bullpen. Good.  
  
Less good was the fact that he caught sight of neither hide nor hair of Allen for the remainder of the week. This wasn’t, on the face of it, all that unusual; as Captain, it wasn’t his responsibility to personally oversee the scientists upstairs. However, as Joe’s kid, Barry Allen was almost always passing through, not to mention all the times he tagged along to crime scenes (even the ones he hadn’t been assigned).  
  
Moreover, Allen was being unusually punctual – David would have expected to have had to remind him about a late report by now, and now he didn’t even have the pretext of reprimanding him for tardiness to call him to his office.  
  
But, as Rob kept reminding him, there wasn’t anything he could do in these situations except practice his patience (not that he’d given Rob any details – he kept what Barry had told him in confidence. Rob just knew him extremely well, and knew what it meant when David attacked his quinoa with particularly spiteful aggression). ~~~~  
  
It wasn’t until Tuesday morning that Allen finally started returning to David’s peripheral vision, appearing every so often as part of the crowd in the station, and while he continued to rush about, he no longer did so in a manner that completely avoided David’s sight-lines. And when afternoon rolled around, Allen surprised him by timidly knocking on David’s office, report in hand. ~~~~  
  
“Uh, hey, Captain. I have the results for, um…” He dropped the case file perfunctorily on the desk like the prop it was, rubbing the back of his neck in discomfort. “Is, is now a bad time? If you’re busy, I can come back later – “ From the way he rushed the words out, it sounded as though he rather hoped that was the case. ~~~~  
  
“I have time now.” And David pushed the report aside to give him his undivided attention. ~~~~  
  
“I'm sure you have… a lot of questions,” Allen hedged, pulling up a chair.  
  
“That is certainly true, Mister Allen.” True, and also a titanic understatement. David had SO MANY QUESTIONS. “Are you offering to answer some questions, or would you rather just share whatever you feel comfortable sharing?” ~~~~  
  
Barry snorted, some of his usual good humor returning to his slightly crooked smile. “To be honest, sir, I wouldn’t know where to begin.” ~~~~  
  
David wasn’t entirely sure he knew where to start either, but the beginning seemed as good a place as any. “When did… it start?” He’d already promised not to ask what ‘it’ was. And David had a strong feeling that even though Barry had come forward with the intent of opening up, he likely drew a firm line at whatever his ability was (if it could be called that. David did not understand how any of this worked). After all, when they last spoke Allen had been very defensive, testing David’s promise not to pry by deliberately not offering any details about what he could do, and that unspoken challenge remained between them. So long as David did not ask what Barry’s power was, he would have the young man’s trust. ~~~~  
  
“I first noticed when I woke up from my coma…”  
  
David nodded, then asked the obvious follow-up, “Did you undergo any experimental coma treatments?” ~~~~  
  
“What? No!” Barry startled, seemingly completely bewildered by the line of inquiry. ~~~~  
  
“Could any of your doctors have done something while you were unconscious?” David pressed, trying to get to the root of it. If they could figure out what caused metahumans to gain their powers… ~~~~  
  
“No!" came the immediate, indignant response. ~~~~  
  
David sighed at his short-sightedness. "How would you know? You were in a coma.” ~~~~  
  
“I wasn't experimented on!" Allen insisted. ~~~~  
  
“But how can you _know_  that, unless you know what really caused it?” ~~~~  
  
That gave Allen some pause, which piqued David’s interest. _Did that mean he_ did _know...?_  "… I trust my doctors!” ~~~~  
  
Hmm. Knew more than he was saying, then – and unlikely to say any more. Time to allow the question to die (but not before he’d had the chance to yank Allen’s chain a bit). He leaned forward, and said, straight-faced, “Barry, this is important - if there's a rogue doctor at CC General, performing illegal human experiments…” Though with the way things were going in the city, maybe that wasn’t as much of a stretch as it might once have been. ~~~~  
  
Allen folded his arms defensively, “I wasn't at CC General for very long; Joe had me moved to S.T.A.R. Labs.” ~~~~  
  
“… and you _don't_  think they experimented on you?” Too easy. He stifled a grin at Barry’s squawk, but perhaps he didn’t hide his amusement well enough, because Allen huffed and rolled his eyes, answer enough to David’s query. ~~~~  
  
David drummed his fingers in thought. “Who else knows, besides Joe?” ~~~~  
  
“What makes you think Joe knows?” ~~~~  
  
He did not dignify that with a response.  
~~~~  
Barry ducked his head, sheepish. “Alright, yeah. But, I, uh, I don’t feel comfortable giving you names; you wouldn’t need to know unless you were someday going to talk to them about me. And, well.” He continued, no doubt anticipating David’s response, “I don’t mean to say that you’d talk without my permission, just that… there’s not much use in having that information, in that case. Sir.” ~~~~  
  
"Barry, I think we can drop the formalities, if we’re having this conversation.” A thought occurred to him, “Would you feel more comfortable if Joe were here for this?" ~~~~  
  
Barry shifted in his seat, started fidgeting with the hem of his sleeve, "Nnnoooo? I don’t think he’d actually want me having this conversation. He’s very… very protective. Worried about me, and people knowing." He flapped one hand in a vague gesture that could have meant anything. ~~~~  
  
"Then I’d like to thank you again for trusting me with this, and know that your trust is not misplaced.” He steepled his fingers as he tried not to take Joe’s implicit lack of trust in him personally. Thinking back to Barry’s fears the last time he’d been in this office made David consider where his longtime friend might be coming from… "Joe has very good reasons to be concerned. Unfortunately, while we have laws against discrimination based on race, age, sex and religion…" he was resolutely not going to be bitter about what _else_  was not included on that list, "And while there are protections for those with disabilities, there’s nothing on the books for people _with_  abilities. Right now, the laws haven’t taken a position on metahumans. Nationally, they’re not even recognized as existing, though media coverage has been steadily expanding – " ~~~~  
  
"The government knows," Barry cut-in abruptly. ~~~~  
  
"Yes, I've been speaking with the mayor, but beyond our city…" ~~~~  
  
Barry shook his head, stiffly, "No. The - the military. Part of the Army, at least. General Eiling, he - " and then he clammed up, lips pressed tightly together. ~~~~  
  
"General Eiling, _what?_ " he spoke, slowly, the cold weight of foreboding settling in his gut.  
  
Barry shook his head mutely, trembling slightly. That sent up all sorts of warning flags, as nightmare scenarios played through David's head. He’d liked to read comics growing up (and there was a childlike part of him that was positively gleeful to be living in a city with a real-life superhero), and military interest in powered people rarely ended well for anyone. It ended particularly poorly for anyone caught in a government lab (and what did it say about his life, that comic books had become a point of reference?). ~~~~  
  
“Barry,” he tried to rein in his wild speculations, “Does General Eiling know you’re a metahuman?” The General had not made a very positive impression the last time he’d been here, taking swaggering to unprofessional levels. David had pegged him as a bully within moments of meeting him, and the thought of what an unscrupulous man like that could have done to instill fear in _Barry Allen_ of all people - Barry Allen, who was reckless and headstrong and generally well-liked by everybody – made David’s blood boil.  
  
“N-no. Well, not _me_ , but - " and he shut his mouth obstinately again. But Barry held a hand, gesturing _wait_ , as he found his words. “In a manner of speaking,” he finally settled on. ~~~~  
  
David breathed through his nose, with controlled, careful breaths. “Has he acted on this knowledge?” ~~~~  
  
That was definitely a flinch! But Barry only shrugged with one shoulder and tried to brush it aside, “He mostly seems to be leaving it alone now.” ~~~~  
  
_‘Now.’_ Was there ever a more ominous word? “Extortion?” In all honesty, David was hoping for extortion, as the least-bad scenario. ~~~~  
  
“Attempted kidnapping,” Barry reluctantly corrected, “But, since he failed, and he’s leaving me alone now, that’s not really a problem. And - ” he shrugged again “ – it’s like you said, with the legal rights and whatnot. He’s military, so I don’t know whether it counts as kidnapping, maybe he had the authority – “  
  
“No, Barry.” Dear God, he wanted to strangle Eiling. “You’re an American citizen on U.S. soil. You have your rights. Even a general has to follow the law, or face court-martial.” How could Barry doubt that? He hoped he hadn’t put that doubt there, by raising the issue of legal standing. He rubbed his temples, trying to work through all the implications of this new information. “Assault is probably a given, with attempted kidnapping, yes?”  
  
“Only in the second degree.” Barry mumbled, looking down at his hands.  
  
“Only in – Barry! You know that's a felony!" Second degree assault could mean a number of things, from ‘attempting to kill someone in the heat of passion’ to ‘injuring someone by recklessly discharging a firearm.’ If Eiling had been trying to abduct Barry, David doubted that either of these applied; use of a deadly weapon seemed more likely, and the urge to strangle Eiling increased tenfold.  
  
Barry looked him in the eye, a resolute cant of his head that David was all too familiar with. “Captain Singh, with all due respect, I’m not pressing charges. I don’t need that kind of attention, and besides, no lasting damage done.” ~~~~  
  
‘No lasting damage.’ _Lasting._ Of course. Barry was killing him with all these qualifiers. ~~~~  
  
“If Eiling comes after you again – " ~~~~  
  
“He won’t,” Barry raised his chin stubbornly. ~~~~  
  
“ _If he comes after you again,"_  David overrode him forcefully, “You will tell me.” A brief staring contest ensued, but David Singh wasn’t a police captain for nothing.  
  
“Fine,” Barry agreed sullenly, folding his arms. “I’ll tell you. If there’s time, and I’m not too busy, you know, evading him. But I’m still not pressing charges, and you shouldn’t go after him; you’ll risk your job, and that’s just not worth it. The city needs you, Captain, and so far as Eiling is concerned… if I’m not worrying, then neither should you.”  
~~~~  
David wanted to keep arguing, but it was unlikely to do much good. The silence stretched, and one of them was going to have to break it. Had the conversation run its course, now that Barry had concluded one topic and had not offered a new one? Did this mean David had to offer him an out? He wasn’t done asking questions, not by a long shot, but he didn’t want their conversation to veer into interrogation. ~~~~  
  
“You _are_ okay now?” he asked, trying to banish thoughts of Eiling from his mind.  
  
“Well, yeah.” And Barry did look fine, healthy. Maybe a little sleep-deprived, but that wasn’t anything new – Allen might arrive late to work more often than not, but he also clocked longer hours, working diligently and writing very thorough reports.  
~~~~

“That’s good.” David hesitated before asking his next question, uncertain whether it would cross one of the unspoken lines regarding Barry’s abilities. “What does it feel like? To be metahuman?”  
  
“Honestly, it… feels like being a person.” From his open expression, he didn’t mean that as a jab at David for asking an inappropriate question. “It’s different, and I’m different, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel strange. And maybe that’s strange, that it doesn’t feel strange or weird, but to me, it feels like the most natural thing in the world. I mean, there was still some figuring-out to do, but… but it was never like an identity crisis. I don’t feel like I was changed into something I’m not. Almost the exact opposite, becoming… more _me_." He smiled, a wide, genuine smile as he thought about it, and that more than anything convinced David that he was going to be alright.  
  
There was a knock at the door, then, and David looked up to see Vukovich waiting outside. He turned back to Barry, who shrugged.

“I’m good. Might as well end on a high note, right?” Barry pushed back his chair and stood up.  
  
“My door is always – well, no, it’s not always open. But if you have any concerns about how the department is handling metahuman issues…”  
  
“I’ll come talk to you. And if I have any personal issues…”  
  
“You’ll talk to Joe.”  
  
Allen huffed a laugh. “Thanks, for… for being so understanding. And for not prying. It’s such a, such a huge secret, and I feel like I can’t tell anyone anything, because it’ll be an all-or-nothing situation, and since ‘all’ is off the table, that only leaves ‘nothing,’ and having ‘say nothing’ as your only option… it doesn’t feel all that great.”  
  
David stood as well, and offered his hand, “Thank you for sharing. You are, and always have been, a very remarkable man, and a credit to the department, Mister Allen.” He had high hopes for him, once Snodgrass finally retired.  
  
Allen flushed at the (well-deserved) praise, muttered something that sounded a bit like ‘still so weird to see you acting nice,’ which David didn’t think he was supposed to hear, and beat a hasty retreat, nearly bumping into Vukovich on the way out, saved only by his quick reflexes.  
  
David settled once more into his position as Police Captain in the CCPD, and all the endless headaches and forms that entailed. “Yes, what is it now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Missouri, where I map Central City to (though, in this case, the same would be true for many of the surrounding states, like Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee) does not, at the time of this writing, have any laws passed prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. It does have an executive order prohibiting discrimination in _public employment_ based on sexual orientation only, that’s been in place since 2010. However, unlike a law, an executive order needs only to be allowed to expire, and its protections will go away. This is what Singh is thinking about when he’s listing what groups are protected under law.
> 
> So far as I can tell (in my quick 10 minutes of research, I did not cross-check my sources), Missouri doesn't distinguish between 'assault' and 'battery' the way some jurisdictions do, where 'assault' is the threat of bodily harm and 'battery' is the physical impact. Instead, Missouri has different degrees of assault, so when Singh says that 'assault is probably a given,' what he's hoping is that the attempted kidnapping involved the lowest, third degree, and was limited to intimidation and threats.
> 
> And YAAAAAY, it's been one year since I first posted 'Keraunopathy'! Guys, I am having so much fun with this series, and look forward to another great year. The response to this story has given me such warm feels, I thank you, all my readers, you guys are great. I feel like I should say more, but I've actually burned up all my words trying to get this done by today, so I'll leave you with these parting words: Filigree, apogee, pedigree, perigee :D


	25. Emergency Contact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Henry watches the news, and is understandably alarmed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joe POV. Tag for the end of 2x06 Enter Zoom - Spoilers ahoy!

Outside the med-bay, somewhere in the Cortex, Barry's phone went off. Not long after it went unanswered, Joe's phone rang. He pulled it out, and when he saw the caller I.D., his stomach plummeted like a stone. "It's Henry."

_"Joe! I saw - is Barry?! Where's Barry, is he…!"_

"Henry, calm down. We've got Barry, we're taking care of him, he's in good hands."

_"On the_ tv _, Joe, I saw that monster holding him by his neck on the eight o'clock news. That is - that is_ not _okay, Joe."_

Joe's previously lead-filled stomach twisted awfully, imagining himself in Henry's shoes. "I'm sorry, Henry. I am  _so sorry_. You should not have found out that way, but we were all a little preoccupied at the time."

" _I get it. I do. I'm not his emergency contact. But,_  Jesus Christ _, I should not have had to be the one to call_ you _, Joe._ " The usually-genial man's tone was positively frosty, colder than the cool demeanor he'd held towards Joe back when Joe had not believed his innocence. It warmed considerably when asking after Barry, though, " _Can I talk to him?_ "

"He… he hasn't woken up yet."

" _Is that - I know he heals quickly, I don't - shouldn't he have woken up by now?_ "

"Barry… he was hurt really badly." A part of him wanted to pass the phone off to Caitlin and let her give Henry the run-down of Barry's chart, share the prognosis doctor to doctor, but that was the coward's way out. He was a police officer, and sometimes he felt like he was the only responsible adult in the room (no way in  _hell_  did Wells count); the buck stopped with him.

In his line of work, he got a lot of practice delivering bad news; there was a process to it, a pattern, a cadence. Joe felt numb as he fell into the familiar rhythm as he outlined all the injuries Barry'd been subjected to.

" _I'm coming back._ "

"Henry - "

" _He's my son, and he's hurt. That would be reason enough, but I am also a doctor, no matter how out of practice. Don't get me wrong, Caitlin is wonderful and she's done a great job taking care of him, but there is not a force on this Earth that could keep me from him right now._ "

Joe sighed heavily, both in sympathy and at the thought of the uphill struggle he himself was faced with. "Henry, listen. Just wait until he wakes up before you rush back here; let him decide if he wants you to drop everything and come."

" _Last time, it took him nine months to wake up._ "

"Listen. There's another reason Barry wouldn't want you to come back. That maniac is still out there, and he knows Barry's face. It isn't  _safe_  to be here." Joe throat felt tight, strangled by the thought of everyone else still in danger with that monster on the loose.

He could hear Henry's heavy breathing down the line, and knew he hadn't convinced him.

"Give him twenty-four hours to wake up. He heals really fast, and his vitals are already much better; he just hasn't woken up yet. When he does, he'll call you. Okay?"

" _…Fine. Twenty-four hours since he fell unconscious, not starting from now. He… He's really doing better?_ "

"He really is."

" _When I saw that…_ "

"I am so sorry, Henry."

There was another long pause, and Joe didn't know if that meant he wasn't forgiven for his oversight yet or not. " _Take care, Joe. And have him call me, yeah?"_ If Henry's false cheer was a little shaky, Joe didn't comment.

"He will, first thing. Goodbye, Henry."

Joe belatedly realized he had the attention of everyone in the room; Cisco was pale, Caitlin looked stricken, and Iris drew him into a hug and sobbed quietly on his shoulder. " _Shh, shh,_  baby girl. It'll be okay."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to every character who has ever been Put On A Bus
> 
> Also, I'm quarticmoose on tumblr now! yay ;D  
> (actually, I've been there a while but I've kept forgetting to mention it...)


	26. Henry Allen Has Never Been Rick-Rolled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (and other twenty-first century developments)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> set after 2x01, before 2x07 'Gorilla Warfare' Henry POV

Henry leaned back as best he could in the bus terminal's hard plastic seats and folded up his now-finished newspaper.

The bus station was a low, cement building with an overpass running directly overhead, so that there was an ever-present rumble in the air. On the wall across from him was a sign which read, in bold letters, 'If You See Something, Say Something,' which he had puzzled over for several minutes but had ultimately been unable to make heads or tails of. Above it, a large clock said that there were still two more hours before his bus would arrive, and behind him a vending machine chugged and churned and finally spat out what sounded like a bottle of soda.

Holding the newspaper in his hands, he hesitated on what to do with it. Ordinarily, he would have left it on an empty seat for someone else to find and read, but maybe now that would be considered littering. He didn't see people reading the paper as often, these days, and he'd heard more than once someone say that 'print is dead,' but people had been saying that since televised newscasts became popular, and newspapers had still managed to survive into the 21st century.

Heck, Iris was a reporter, for  _Picture News_ , no less, and doing very well for herself.

(The first time he'd seen her name on a byline, he'd felt such bittersweet joy. On the one hand, after years of hearing Barry's stories and speaking with Iris those occasional times she tagged along, he felt as though he knew her very well indeed, and therefore her success was very much something to be celebrated. On the other hand - and it would sound maudlin to say it out loud -  _they grow up so fast…_ )

In prison, he'd read the paper every chance he could, first to keep current with what was going on in the world, and later to keep track of his son,  _the hero_.

He smiled to himself at the thought, this secret joy glowing like a warm ember in his heart. Of course there were times he wanted to brag to the heavens, shout his exultation from the rooftops, but Henry had been living a pretty solitary existence for quite some time, and he knew how to keep a lid on it.

So instead of jumping onto his chair and throwing his hands into the air, he shifted in his seat, still trying (and failing) to get comfortable, and looked around at the others waiting for their buses. As so often seemed to be the case at any given moment, at least half of them were on their color-screen PDAs, which didn't even need a stylus. Except they weren't PDAs, they were cellphones - smartphones, he amended mentally. PalmPilots had gone the way of the dodo, apparently.

Contrary to what might be believed, Henry wasn't completely ignorant of the changes in technology. He'd been able to keep abreast of progress, to some degree, by reading the papers. But at the time, he hadn't paid much attention to the advertisements for the new Galaxy  _et cetera_ ; it hadn't been as though he'd ever expected to see one, so on the whole they had had very little to do with him. Barry would be sure to inform him of any significant scientific breakthroughs, but his son's interests skewed more towards physics and chemistry than consumer technology, so while Henry got the full play-by-play on the comet landing, Barry hadn't ever taken the time to explain the proliferation of Wi-Fi hotspots.

Henry remembered celebrating New Year's in 2000 - a new year, a new century, and a new millennium all in one, and he remembered the Y2K virus that never happened. Since then, Henry had only kept track of the year abstractly, primarily just to know Barry's birthday. Unlike some of the guys in IHP, he hadn't keep a countdown of days left, and the present day and year had had very little bearing on his own life. It was a form of timeless existence, and if it weren't for the newspapers, he might have lost track of the days entirely.

So while the fact that it was the year 2015 was by no means a recent revelation, he hadn't really experienced this new century before.

There were so many little things that newspapers did not consider newsworthy, but that collectively shaped the way people dressed and talked, and apparently viral videos on YouTube were central to understanding the world, and had nothing to do with epidemiology.

The newspapers talked a lot about social media and how it was changing everything, but they rarely did much to explain what it actually  _was_ , and where a person should start in order to get an understanding of it. He had a list of movies that Cisco described as Absolutely Imperative, and Henry was quite looking forward to watching The Lord of the Rings; he'd read the books in high school and several times again in prison, and he'd seen a lot of very positive reviews for the films. The kids had also tried to put together a list of the most influential books of the past decade and a half, but after listing all the Harry Potter books they'd run out of steam, and besides, Henry had already read those; by and large, he was pretty well caught-up in his reading, having made a considerable dent in IHP's library while he was there.

The kids - Barry and Iris but also Cisco and Caitlin - had also put together playlists for him on his phone (he had a cellphone now, where he'd only ever needed a pager before. Joe, working on the force, had had a cellphone since before they were even on the general market, but Henry had never felt the need for one). It had mix of his favorite artists - the Allman Brothers and Bob Dylan and The Eagles - as well as new artists he'd only ever read about, if he'd heard of them at all. He could - and did - listen to as much music as he wanted with the tiny little headphones that fit inside his ears (and he was still not sure how he felt about that). But he wasn't sure if listening to all this music helped him understand his place in the world any better. At least, no more so than to the degree which music normally bestowed enlightenment.

In short, there were a lot of lists on how to get up-to-date with  _popular_  media, but no lists on how to get current with  _social_  media. He had a feeling that when people said something was trending, they didn't mean it was trendy, because the world might be crazier than it was before but there was no way in hell anyone would call Donald Trump 'trendy.' Not even his supporters.

And 'cat videos,' there seemed to be some universal consensus on their significance, but whatever it was eluded Henry. Which wasn't to say he hadn't spent several hours watching cats fall off of shelves, but he liked the videos of baby animals and unlikely friendships better.

Really, he wasn't surprised people spent so much time on their phones; the internet was amazing, but it was also so vast, and Henry felt rather adrift at times. When Barry used to come to visit, he'd talk some about what was going on in his life and in the world, but Henry was beginning to see why it wouldn't have occurred to him to explain all the new 'memes' being generated; there were just so many, and they were constantly changing. It was so often such a visual medium - how would a person even begin to explain dramatic chipmunk?

He still talked with Barry on the phone, about as often as Barry used to visit - and his phone had 'unlimited talk minutes,' which he'd never thought possible for a cellular phone. However, the habits of a decade were hard to shake, and so their conversations tended to stay under ten minutes, even though there was no such rule any longer, and Barry didn't have to pay $8 a minute to accept a collect call from prison anymore.

Henry turned his newspaper over in his hands, still undecided on what to do with it.

For years he had tried to get Barry to stop fretting over him and live his own life, but Barry'd never listened.

So now Henry was going to take matters into his own hands and  _do_  something about it.

He could do that now.  _Take action._  (what a novel concept) Barry's life had revolved around Henry's for long enough.

Having as much freedom as he did now - it was a heady feeling. Little things that he thought he'd never have again - like control over light switches - could throw him for a loop. It was exhausting to be constantly surprised by things, to be overwhelmed by new information. And it was often times embarrassing as well - the mistakes that he inevitably made, but also, internally, he was embarrassed by just  _what_  could overwhelm him. The mundane and commonplace things that were not meant to cause anxiety.

His son could break the sound barrier in his sneakers, and Henry could break down at having too many choices for his breakfast cereal.

He didn't feel like much of a role model, and maybe it was petty to feel ashamed, maybe he knew Barry wouldn't care, but none of that stopped Henry from feeling the way he did.

He needed some space. He needed to clear his head, find his feet again. So he plotted a course to Coast City, to see the ocean. He wanted to be overwhelmed  _properly_ , with something actually deserving of awe, where feeling daunted was a normal and natural response. He wanted to stand on the shore and feel small and humbled, because the ocean was vast, deep, and unfathomable, and next to it he would actually  _be_  small, not just maladjusted.

He had time. He was in no rush. The course he'd plotted for himself was really more of a rough guideline, and already he was thinking of making a detour to Granite Peak - the fishing was good this time of year and if he put it off until after his visit to Coast City that might no longer be the case.

The phone in his pocket chimed with a text from Barry. Painstakingly tapping out his response, Henry set his newspaper aside on the seat next to him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This was written because, culturally and politically, March of 2000 was still The Nineties. (check out the tvtropes page for a more comprehensive breakdown)
> 
> Social media wasn't a thing; there was no Twitter or Facebook - heck, there wasn't even MySpace yet. He's never been Rick-rolled on YouTube, because there was no YouTube. The first generation iPod - not iPod touch, not iPod mini, straight-up iPod - had not been released yet.
> 
> Over a third of internet users still used dial-up. The word 'wi-fi' was less than a year old. Cell phones still had antennae - they didn't have touchscreens. It was a lot harder to butt-dial people with a flip phone. Circuit City was still around, and so was Radio Shack.
> 
> Henry has never been frisk-groped by the TSA. He's never seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies, or the Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Finding Nemo, or any of the MCU. The forth Harry Potter book hadn't come out yet (fortunately for him he had access to a library, but he didn't get to witness the full phenomenon).
> 
> A/N2: Okay, I know I set myself up a great opening to talk about Henry figuring out that Barry is the Flash, and then did not take it. That's because that particular story has been a WIP on my computer since February (2015), and while I would still like to finish it someday, I didn't want it to hold up the completion of this fic. Also, including it here would require a lot of past perfect tense, so really, it's better off on its own.
> 
> Most of this was written listening to 'Soulshine' by the Allman Brothers on a loop :D [Update: I have now vidded this song - you can check out my Henry Allen tribute [here](https://youtu.be/BqOpIovCRPI)!]
> 
> Also, $8 a minute isn't even the most expensive prison phonecall rate I've come across in my research. outrageous.


	27. Cisco's Lab

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part of the problem with Barry pushing everybody away, and everybody subsequently giving him space, was that Cisco no longer had a lab.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set before 2x01. Pure introspection. Cisco POV
> 
> Written for a prompt/comment thingy by okbutyooseunghothough on tumblr a while ago, something to the effect of 'is anybody going to talk about the fact that Eobard passed over Cisco to will STAR Labs to Barry?'

 

 

Part of the problem with Barry pushing everybody away, and everybody subsequently giving him space, was that Cisco no longer had a lab. Caitlin had found a new space at Mercury Labs, and Barry, who _already had a lab_ (granted, it was a forensics lab, but it was still his own space to do Science! in) now had a second lab, which, so far as Cisco could tell, he wasn't making much use of. It was STAR Labs, for cryin' out loud, it wasn't just some glorified closet to hang a suit in! It was meant for tinkering and inventing and researching and testing the boundaries of the possible, and that's why Cisco had fallen in love.

It had been so full of people, once upon a time. Good, valuable people - and Hartley - had walked those halls and brainstormed ideas; Caitlin in particular had had fondness for collaboration, which surprised the people who thought she was very aloof, but in truth she was passionate about sharing, felt it was at the root of scientific advancement.

Cisco thought about STAR Labs standing empty, and felt cold.

It had been emptied once before, after the particle accelerator exploded, reduced to a husk…  
Except, not really? Because Caitlin stayed, and so had -

(Cisco stomped on that thought, hard)

Barry had made it abundantly clear that he didn't want Cisco around (or anybody else, for that matter, but as his best friend, it was hard not to take that personally), so Cisco had needed to haul parts into his parents' garage to work on The Boot, which was humiliating on so many levels. His parents just didn't get him, didn't understand that what he did was important, that what he could offer the world was _valuable_.

He'd never felt any encouragement in his interests from anyone, not until -

( _You're incredibly clever, Cisco. I've always -_ )

Barry had two labs, now (not that Cisco was counting, or anything) - Barry, the object of Wells' obsession. Cisco… wasn't jealous of that. That was a really sucky thing to be, a horrible position to be in, okay, he did not want to trade places with Barry Allen and have megalomaniacs try to kill him as a baby. That just wasn't cool, man.

Okay, but he _could_ be jealous of Barry, a little bit, maybe? Not in a bitter way, just -

As a kid, you can play games like 'would you rather have the ability to fly, or be super-strong?' and you get to entertain these fantasies about having superpowers. Just yesterday, in the grocery store, there were these two little kids with their mom in the line in front of Cisco - he remembered their conversation because he'd thought it was adorable. The older kid (and he didn't even come up to Cisco's waist) had asked the younger: "Do you want to be Captain America or a werewolf?" and then, not giving his brother time to answer, declared "I'll be Captain America." (why those two options? Cisco really wanted to know)

It's just harmless fun and playing pretend, and some people would pick the ability to fly and some people would rather have super-strength, because everyone's tastes are different. And you can be a little jealous if someone comes up with a cooler idea for a superpower than you did, but you're not going to hold it against them, or get angry or upset about it. And you also don't have to deal with the consequences of actually having superpowers, which should definitely weigh in on the decision-making process.

Except in Cisco's crazy real life, metahuman powers got distributed at random, and Barry got to be Captain America and all that's left for Cisco is the werewolf (the Lon Chaney Jr. version, probably, because if it was the Michael J. Fox version Wells wouldn't have had any reason to apologize, that would have been dope).

(and no, Cisco is not dissing on _The Wolfman_ or Jack Pierce's make-up design, he just doesn't want to live his life in periods of sanity begging to be locked up or killed for fear of what he'll become)

And speaking of movies…

A person doesn't _actually_ need to be watching a movie with someone else in order to enjoy it. But watching together improved the movie experience exponentially, and it appeased the small, attention-starved part of Cisco that he liked to ignore.

But Wells - Eobard - was all kinds of evil. Twisted, messed-up evil. Like, plotting to kill a little kid was bad enough, but then everything else…

Cisco shuddered, but trying not to think about Wells was clearly not working.

(Memory was weird. Human memory was notoriously prone to errors and mistaken recollections. The details of things, those tended to be lost.)  
(And Cisco was such a special snowflake, he could remember things that hadn't happened)

So while Cisco remembered Movie Nights in the Cortex with Dr. Wells, he wasn't sure he remembered all the movies they watched, or in what order, or what comments he'd made, and he didn't remember Wells' responses.

He could scrutinize his memories all he wanted, for clues, for signs, for - something, anything, he didn't know what -

But whatever details he could recall, he couldn't know how accurate they were. And the sorts of details he was looking for - what did evil look like, actually? It didn't have twirly mustache, that was for sure.

( _Because the truth is -_ )

What he _did_ remember, were… thoughts, generalities, impressions, feelings. And the fact that now he knew he was wrong to have felt those feelings (of safety, of contentment, _filial love_ , the list went on and on…) towards Wells, didn't change that he _had_ felt them. Or the fact that the memories of those _feelings_ were stronger and more clear than the details of what they'd been doing, permeating all his recollections of the man who had murdered him in cold blood.

( _\- I've grown quite fond of you. And in many ways, you -_ )

Memory was notoriously prone to errors. Barry could talk at length about the troubles with witness testimony, and how important the development of forensic science was because it was _objective_. Already Cisco's new awareness of the reality of the past was going back and re-writing memories, insisting that he had not been _that_ happy, that Wells had not smiled at him so often - that it was only nostalgia for a lost friend which made his time in STAR Labs seem better than it actually was.

( _\- have shown me -_ )

He often found himself actively practicing a form of reverse-nostalgia, where instead of distilling all the best memories of an earlier time to make everything rosy, he instead excised the best bits and focused on the worst, like those moments when Wells' temper would flare up, usually in response to military meddling, but also sometimes when things did not go according to plan. Sure, he didn't lash out _at_ Cisco, but Cisco was no longer willing to give even the memory of Wells the benefit of the doubt.

( _\- what it's like -_ )

Cisco didn't have a lab anymore. STAR Labs as it once was existed only in his memory, and even that memory was under attack - was in need of refinement - was not to be trusted. If he were in possession of STAR Labs now… what would that mean? Would that make it wrong to attack the memory of Wells, because _not all of it was untrue?_

( _\- to have a son_ )

He just didn't know.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: It was hard to figure out where to end this. As I said at the beginning, this is pure introspection, so I can't have someone come in and interrupt his musings or have a train arrive or otherwise introduce an action to bring the story to an end. If anyone has any thoughts on where I ended it and if it was satisfying, or if it should have ended sooner/later, I'd love to hear them :)
> 
> It doesn't quite fill the prompt since I didn't go in depth into Cisco and Wells' relationship. I started writing and it went in this direction and I didn't fight it :)
> 
> Also the Captain America or Werewolf conversation actually happened as described, but it was more than a month ago.
> 
> Lon Chaney Jr. played Lawrence 'Larry' Talbot in The Wolfman (1941), which popularized werewolves as Hollywood movie monsters, and it and the subsequent films (e.g. Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman) contributed greatly to werewolf lore that we take for granted today, like introducing their vulnerability to silver or being forced to change on the full moon.
> 
> Michael J. Fox played Scott Howard in the family-friendly movie Teen Wolf (1985), which more people are probably familiar with so I won't go into detail here. Though people are probably even more familiar with the ongoing Teen Wolf tv series, so… just be aware that some names are the same and there are werewolves, and that's where the similarities end. Suffice it to say, I posited that Cisco wouldn't mind being this incarnation of a werewolf, because Cisco would not object to being good at basketball, maybe, and also the werewolves (Scott and his dad) maintain pretty good control over their transformations - the increased aggression becomes a problem but Scott and his dad continue to live ordinary lives in suburbia, so…


	28. Cockroaches

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wally hates dealing with Clark Bronwen, the man is a scumbag. (missing scene from 2x12, Fast Lane. Wally POV.)

"What do you mean, my entrance fee is missing? I paid you last week!"

Bronwen's cluttered office smells strongly of the cheap cigars he likes to smoke, probably because he thinks it makes him look intimidating. Wally doesn't know who he's trying to fool with that ploy, but, he can admit to himself, Clark Bronwen can be plenty intimidating without theatrics; the man is _bad news_ and Wally is antsy to resolve this mix-up quickly and be on his way.

"So you did." He waves a familiar envelope of cash through the air, "I actually just wanted to ask you a question." Bronwen circles around his desk to get up in Wally's space.

"So ask it." Wally folds his arms defensively, and refuses to back down, because he knows he hasn't done anything wrong (but he's worried about what sort of question needs to be asked in person at this hour of night).

"Have you been talking to reporters, Taillight?"

"What? I ain't been talking to no reporters!"

"So you didn't know she was a reporter?" Bronwen presses.

_Uh-oh._ "What're you talking about?"

"Funny you should ask that. Here's what I know: I know you talked to a reporter 'cause I saw you talking to this girl, and then this girl, right, she comes to me and _tells me_ she's a reporter. And not only that," he drops his hand into a vice-like grip on Wally's shoulders, digging his fingers in as he shoves, forcing Wally back a step, "Not only that, but then she goes on to try to blackmail me."

Wally's pulse races as the air in his lungs seems to freeze, _Iris!_ "I di-didn't know she was a reporter! She was just… coming on to me, but I got a b-bad vibe off her and told her to take a hike." Dammit, he hates it when he stutters – he thought he finally kicked that habit in his teens. Also, he's almost definitely going to hell for that last comment. He kinda wants to wash his mouth out with soap now, to go along with the brain bleach and therapy Iris is hell-bent on driving him to.

Bronwen chuckles, low and without humor, "You are a terrible liar, Taillight. Try again. "

Wally can feel sweat bead on his forehead as he quickly tries to weigh his options - there just isn't time to come up with a good excuse, and if Bronwen catches him in a lie again, he might start getting _persuasive._ "I – she's a friend, okay, you're right, but I didn't say nothing to her! I swear!"

Bronwen leans forward, his rank breath hot on Wally's face as he studies him (and yes, it's terrifying, even though his beard is scraggly as shit, because this gangster could decide to kill him at any moment), before he lets Wally go with one final shove. "I don't like being blackmailed. It's such a nuisance. Fortunately, I know how you're gonna make it up to me."

Wally has a sinking feeling it's not going to be anything good, "What?"

"You're going to throw the next race."

" _What?_ "

"Throw. The. Race. You know: take a dive, stack the deck, your ass goes down in the fifth - you will _lose._ You're the reining champ, the favorite to win. I stand to make a lot of money if I bet against you."

"That's – " Wally clicks his mouth shut before he can say 'cheating.' Clark Bronwen is not the sort of person who'd care.

Wally thinks about it. He thinks about how Iris should've minded her own business and not stuck her nose in where it didn't belong. He tries not to think about what Bronwen will do to her if Wally doesn't do what he says.

_Throw a race?_ Could he _do_ that? Help some scumbag cheat his way into what will probably amount to tens of thousands of dollars?

Wally likes racing, but he isn't _like_ these other racers. He's not a cockroach, crawling through filth; he has standards, honor, lines he won't cross. He's in it for the speed, not the glory or the money; honestly doesn't give a shit about the betting that goes on around the races (when he needed the money for hospital bills, he was smarter than that, knew better than to gamble away his winnings).

But… but _Iris_. And… is it really his sense of honor that makes him rebel at the thought of throwing the race, or is it his sense of _pride?_ He loves his car; he'd hate to lose it, especially after all the hours and hours of work he spent, painstakingly tuning it up just right. And _of course_ he likes the attention he gets, his reputation as Taillight, the applause…

But none of that, he realizes, standing in Bronwen's cramped, smelly office, the troll himself leaning into Wally's space in a way that says he means _business_ , none of that is worth Iris's life.

"Okay. I'll do it." Something twists in his gut as he says it, something that whispers _deal with the devil_ but Wally pushes those thoughts aside; this is just a one-time thing. He's not going to be Bronwen's lackey.

And he knows, as he finally escapes into the cool night air, that he did the right thing. That Iris will be as safe as he can make her if he goes through with this.

Provided, of course, that he can convince her to mind her own business.

He deliberates for a moment, trying to figure out where he should look for her. He realizes that he's mostly only seen her at Joe's house, but that can't be the only place she spends time. Wally chews his lip in thought – he'd really rather not have to confront Iris in front of Joe, because Joe'll probably rush to defend his daughter and Wally doesn't need to have this argument two-on-one. And he really needs to convince Iris to stay away, because they _will_ kill her otherwise.

He realizes he doesn't know where Iris hangs out, but he knows where she works, and he decides to look for her at Picture News before he tries Joe's.

He can only hope that she will see reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, one line that stood out to me was when Iris arrives in Clark Bronwen's office and he comments that she was the one hanging around Taillight; I figured Wally's gotta get some heat for that .
> 
> And then Wally says to Iris, "Show up there again, and I won't be able to protect you," which makes me think that maybe he protected her once, but wouldn't have enough influence to do it a second time.
> 
> West siblings, looking out for each other! :D


	29. Performance Review

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Singh has reason to look back on his past interactions with Barry Allen. Sequel to 'The Follow-Up'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows "The Follow-Up." Set after season 1 but before season 2. (friendly reminder that "The Follow-Up" took place before 'Grodd Lives')
> 
> This one has been a long time coming. A lot of re-watching and note-taking went into this to form a coherent timeline. I’d like to make a note of the following points: Singh is preoccupied with wedding planning in 1x21, is away on his honeymoon in 1x22, and is not seen in person again on screen until the singularity. And then sometime between the end of season 1 and the start of season 2, “meta-human” becomes a household name.
> 
> I've got some meta on the subject over on [tumblr](http://quarticmoose.tumblr.com/post/144516953549/meta-on-the-word-meta-human), there was just no way I was going to be able to work it all into this fic as I'd originally been trying to do.
> 
> Also: cliche bad guys are cliche and I'm not even sorry. I'm just too happy to be posting a chapter again, so sorry for the long wait you guys!
> 
> _slightly_ more swearing in this chapter compared to previous chapters, but on the whole I don't even know if anyone will notice

In the weeks following the revelation that Barry Allen was a meta-human, David was so busy with formalizing wedding plans that puzzling over the origins of their powers and the effects they’d have on his city was put on the back-burner, pushed almost entirely from his mind. He had enough on his plate making sure that the caterers knew to make more than one vegan option, that the florist knew that they’d changed the color scheme to blue and gold, and that the DJ knew that Aunt Sri might try to give a saxophone solo, _which under no circumstances must she be allowed to do_.

Life went on, time flew by, no matter that there weren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done that needed to get done. He was so distracted that he felt like he didn’t understand half of what was going on in his own precinct anymore – why did Thawne return from his time off looking more exhausted than David had ever seen him (and even somewhat malnourished)? Why did Joe throw that banana in the trash with extreme prejudice? Where was Barry Allen?

(actually that last was such a perennial question it was more of a reflex than anything else. He’d long ago given up on getting a satisfactory answer)

When the wedding went off without a hitch, David kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Rob chided him for being a cynic and a pessimist, but David couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been too easy. Fortunately, his husband did an excellent job distracting him from his worries – they’d chosen Sydney for their honeymoon and had had a fantastic time. Rob got to put his boating experience to good use, and David discovered his new favorite wine.

So _of course_ things would go to hell shortly after their return, when the sky literally ripped open and a black hole appeared above their city. After that, the weirdness of Central City couldn’t be ignored any longer, not even by the most die-hard skeptics. Things got... very tense, for a while.

In the aftermath of the clean-up, Cecile asked him if he had any thoughts on how to handle meta-humans; David was briefly flummoxed at where she’d even learned the term, but didn’t ask. Some of her questions he had good answers for – STAR Labs would be able to refit Iron Heights with the necessary tech to contain meta-humans, for example, so that was one problem taken care of.

Some of her other questions, not so much. Crime was still crime, on this they agreed, at least; it didn’t matter whether someone used a hailstorm to rob a bank or did it the old-fashioned way, it was still a felony. But they disagreed whether assault by a meta-human should automatically be considered “assault with a dangerous weapon,” which carried a harsher sentence. David argued against, saying it unfairly targeted meta-humans, who, following that line of logic, must always be considered armed and dangerous. And it could be misapplied to meta-humans whose powers were not involved in the conflict at all; if they used their fists to throw a punch, it shouldn’t make a difference if they could breathe underwater or not.

Cecile countered that the power some of these individuals possessed in their pinky finger alone made .45-caliber rounds look like chump change, that while she was sympathetic to his point of view, there was too great a difference between being genuinely unarmed and possessing logic-defying powers to allow a literal reading of ‘unarmed.’ Ultimately, it wasn’t up to them to decide –  either the government would pass legislation clarifying the issue, or else a court case would bring things to a head – and they had to let the matter lie. David wasn't particularly looking forward to either scenario.

* * *

The city rebuilt, brick by brick. Not quite the same as it was before, but recognizably still home.

CCPD had lost a lot of good officers the past year, a record high. Hell, Joe alone had lost two partners in as many years, including his future son-in-law. David didn’t want to push him too hard to find another partner, but he knew he couldn’t allow Joe to operate on his own indefinitely, especially not after Cecile had pulled him aside and recommended that he keep an eye on Joe (for what reason, she didn’t say).

They were getting an influx of new recruits to make up the shortfall, but most of them didn’t take the presence of meta-humans in the city seriously enough. David had approved Detective West’s plan for an Anti-MetaHuman Taskforce, of course he had, but it struggled to maintain membership; requests for transfers out of Central City spiked notably every time members of the taskforce faced their first real meta-human. Still, he kept Ramon on as a scientific adviser, both because it was necessary and because having him around seemed to lift the spirits of the officers around him, who’d been to more than enough funerals in recent times.

David had hoped that hiring Ramon might help bring Allen out of his shell as well, but as far as he could tell, the young man went out of his way to avoid his friend. Ever since the freak black hole, it had become at once both more important and more difficult to engage Barry Allen, who’d become extremely withdrawn and at times even punctual, which was very out-of-character for him.

So David was not particularly surprised to find himself keeping one eye on the CSI as they processed a home burglary in Windsor Heights. Allen looked much the same as he always did these days, grimly determined and worn ragged at the edges; David was pretty sure he was wearing the same shirt he had worn yesterday. But maybe that was only a side-effect of being called to process evidence at a crime scene at four-thirty in the morning…

There really wasn’t much to see, he mused into his second travel cup of coffee. The house’s security alarm had alerted the police when the back door had been broken open; however despite the CCPD’s rapid response time, the perpetrators had already cleared out by the time patrol cars arrived on the scene. The owners were out of town on vacation for the week, and there weren’t any witnesses.

Currently, he was trying to keep warm in the increasingly chilly kitchen, a constant draft of cold, pre-dawn air blowing in from the broken door. Officer Waid was completely absorbed in his phone, clearly ready to call it a day. Ahmed was doing slightly better, at least nominally reviewing the facts of the case on his notepad, but his slightly-glazed expression betrayed him. At least Allen had enough focus for all of them, methodically gathering evidence.

It should have been a routine B&E case – photograph the scene, dust for fingerprints, and move on to other cases while they waited (hoped) for the stolen items to surface.

It _should_ have been routine, so of course the relatively peaceful early morning was interrupted by movement where there shouldn’t be movement, and David reflexively drew his sidearm, keeping it at the ready and pointed low.

“This is the police! Show yourself!” he barked in the direction of the dining room, and he was peripherally of his officers coming to attention and similarly readying themselves.

“You’ll never get us!” the man’s voice came from around the door frame, and he punctuated his statement by firing several wild shots from a pistol.

"Allen, GET DOWN!" David bellowed, pushing the young man down behind the island counter in the middle of the kitchen, following a moment later himself.

‘Us,’ the man had said. _Well, fuck._ Their shooter had at least one unknown, possibly-armed accomplice hanging around somewhere. So much for clearing the crime scene – how had they managed to miss that their thieves had not, in fact, left the scene? When David found out who was responsible, he was going to tear them a new one.

But first, they all had to get out of this intact.

He popped his head above the counter just long enough to confirm that Ahmed and Waid had both found shelter, though their sightlines were less than ideal. He could hear, over the ringing in his ears, the sound of Waid requesting backup into his radio – so the stand-off would not continue indefinitely. That was something, at least.

A stray bullet clipped a large copper pot with a resounding clang. David couldn’t be sure, but the angle of the shot didn’t seem consistent with the others. Two shooters, then, and he couldn’t get eyes on the newcomer. He and his officers were effectively pinned down, returning fire when they could, secure enough for the time being… but how long could it last?

“Captain, I can help.”

David didn’t spare Allen a glance, instead making another quick survey of the room to see if he could spot the second shooter. “Stay _down_ , Allen.”

“I can _help_ , Singh,” he insisted again, tone dead serious.

He sounded so utterly certain that David paused and looked at him, because maybe Barry _could_ help, he _was_ a meta-human, after all… but more importantly…

“Are you bullet-proof?”

“No.”

“Then stay down!” David seized the opportunity to take a shot at an exposed elbow, but missed.

Barry seethed, and for a moment David thought he was going to try to force his way past him to get out from behind the counter - the kitchen island wasn’t completely freestanding, since it connected to the wall on one side. Which meant that Barry was effectively penned in, with David bodily blocking the only way out from behind it. David rather liked this arrangement, but Barry apparently had other ideas, if the way he shifted back and forth was any clue. 

David glared at him, immovable, until he visibly subsided, and then he refocused on his target to fire another shot. He thought their argument was over, but he was wrong.

“* _Let me help._ *”

David whipped around to stare – that warbled voice hadn’t sounded anything like Barry. Warped and resonant, it wasn’t a voice he’d ever heard in person before, though it matched descriptions he’d heard. Descriptions of…

"Oh."

So _that’s_ why he hadn’t wanted David to know what his meta-human ability was. It did rather give the game away. He looked into Allen’s eyes – in _The Flash’s_ eyes, which blazed with flickering lightning – and gave a small, barely-there nod, shifting to the side so that he was no longer penning Barry behind the counter, and less than a second later a gust of wind blasted past him.

He was still blinking the afterimages of lightning from his eyes when he heard near-simultaneous grunts from the dining room and the side hallway. Quickly surveying the scene, he saw both burglars slumped on the floor, disarmed and handcuffed, the lingering smell of cordite sharp in the air (cordite, and now ozone). The gust of wind returned behind him, and Barry Allen was back as if he’d never left.

Looking slightly sheepish, Allen gave a small wave.

David stared.

The moment stretched.

“Is it over?” Barry eventually asked with exaggerated hopefulness.

David didn’t know who he was trying to fool. Not himself, certainly, and he took a moment to marvel at what an astonishingly bad liar Allen was - that attempt to sound guileless was so unconvincing it bordered on parody. But he seemed to be waiting for a response, and David was at a loss.

“What?”

Allen sighed, and jerked his head in the direction of Ahmed and Waid, still out of sight. “Are they gone?” he asked again with false innocence, though now David could see that part of Barry’s difficulty with sounding genuine stemmed from the fact that he was pitching his voice to carry across the room.

Headache. He had such a pounding headache from everything that had just happened, his ears hurt from the gunfire, he honestly could not deal with these shenanigans right now.

Didn’t seem like he had much of a choice, though.

“Yes,” he spoke a little louder than he otherwise might have, “The Flash stopped them. Ahmed, Waid, are you alright?”

“We’re fine, Captain." Waid called back, "How’s the kid?”

He glanced at Barry, who heaved a long-suffering sigh at the diminutive. “Allen’s fine.”

Their backup arrived at that point, and the job of processing the crime scene and bagging all the bullets was passed on to a new team, one that hadn’t been shot at any time in the last hour. Allen was kept busy filling in his replacement on what needed to be done, which was just as well since it gave David a moment to think.

“Lucky the Flash arrived when he did,” Ahmed commented as a paramedic checked him over for injuries.

David grunted in response, too many racing thoughts and too much adrenaline making a garbled mess of his brain. He remembered: _*fire and ice and a mythic figure made real* *Allen apologizing, only digging himself deeper* *The Flash racing up the side of Rob’s building to put out a fire* *Barry, twitching, “I_ am _a meta-human”*_

Ahmed continued undeterred, clearly awed to have been personally saved by The Flash, “How did he know we needed help?”

“He was probably nearby when he heard the gunshots.”

“Doesn’t he ever _sleep_?”

David thought about his earlier observations, of a bone-tired young man wearing yesterday’s shirt.

“I’m sure he does.”

* * *

 

When they got back to the station, there was more activity than usual for such an early morning shift, but that was only to be expected, with a shootout. Instead of disappearing into the crowd or into his lab (or into the wind, David thought abruptly, that was another possibility), Barry was standing in the lobby, gazing up at the wall sculpture that dominated the space.

He approached cautiously, suddenly unsure even though he was clearly expected. “Barry, can we talk?”

Barry’s expression was unfathomable, but he did nod. “Sure, Captain.” 

Barry led him not to his lab but to a roof-access door. Neutral ground, David supposed, looking at the cigarette butts littering the ground and the air vents that arced into the space in irregular intervals. Several yards to the left, the repaired skylight to Barry’s lab caught the light of the rising sun and glowed a burnished gold.

“So…” Barry trailed off.

“So.” David answered, equally at a loss.

“Ta-daa?” Barry’s jazz-hands _vibrated_ through the air for a moment before he dropped his hands to his sides and started drumming his fingers nervously. He was, now that David was looking for it, almost in constant motion.

David had had the time to turn things over in his mind on the drive over; not as much time as he’d have liked, but enough to process through his initial reactions. He’d discovered that his primary reaction, after surprise, was embarrassment.

He didn’t mind that Barry hadn’t told him – he was neither a therapist nor a confidant, and as a vigilante (in the most technical sense), allowing David to maintain plausible deniability was probably a kindness. Now he’d have to be more mindful of his paperwork, weighing which details _should_ be obscured for the sake of the Flash’s identity against which details _could_ be fudged without harming the integrity of the report.

No, what he remembered most of all was the way he’d praised the Flash to high heaven, unwittingly all within earshot of the man in question. Joe’s kid, almost twenty years his junior, and David had acted like a complete fanboy, lifting the Flash up on a pedestal as though there was no problem he could not solve.

And Barry, who was the Flash, had heard every word. Mortifying was really the only word for it.

But if he’d known… could he really say that he would not have said exactly the same things? Swallowing his embarrassment might be a bitter pill, but it wasn’t as though the praise was undeserved; every piece of flattery had been sincerely meant. It wasn’t fair to the hero (or to Barry, for that matter) to think that being Barry Allen when he wasn’t wearing red leather could somehow depreciate his heroism. Allen had always been smart, with a drive to uncover the truth, and in possession of the biggest heart David had ever known. If David ever thought that being Barry Allen was a step down from _anything_ , he needed to re-examine his priorities.

The realization that he was _talking to The Flash_ , at this very moment, hit him upside the head once more. All the things he’d wanted to say to the hero if he had the chance burned unspoken in his throat and made his mouth dry.

One thought stood out from all the rest, however, the one thing he would tell the Flash if he could only say one thing (he'd had the chance to say it once, briefly, but it bore repeating).

“Thank you.”

“You don’t have to…” Barry shifted, looking very uncomfortable.

“I do, and I want to. You saved us tonight, the way you’ve saved us countless other times.”

Barry shrugged, and zipped over to the edge of the roof to peer down without answering. David marveled at the casual display of speed, and wondered how much he held himself back on a daily basis.

He stepped forward so that he was standing at Barry’s shoulder. “You saved Rob’s life once, too. He said if I should ever come face to face with the Flash, I should pass along his thanks.”

“I’m glad he’s alright; he seems like a nice guy.” His eyes widened and he realized what he might have implied. “Not that being nice is a condition of getting rescued, of course - I’d have rescued him even if he were a big jerk! Er… and I’m not implying anything about your taste in men either, Captain, I didn’t say that I thought you’d marry a jerk – you’ll remember I said Rob seems nice!”

David blinked at the response, momentarily thrown. “Have you met him?”

Apparently the question took some thought to answer. “I don’t… think so? No, well, yes, sort of, but he won’t remember it.” Barry fidgeted, tugging at the cuffs of his sleeves. “There may have been a small amount of time travel involved, and it never happened.”

Time travel. That was… that was something. Definitely something. Something _huge_ that he would think about more at a later date, when he wasn’t running on fumes and stubbornness. Why was Barry Allen’s life so goddamn strange?

“What changed?”

“Huh?”

“What changed in the timeline that kept you from meeting Rob?” he clarified. “For that matter, what caused you to meet Rob in the first place?”

Barry was quiet for a long time. “You got hurt. Lightning, and a filing cabinet.” One of those seemed a lot less severe than the other, until Barry elaborated, “The lightning knocked you into a cabinet, which broke your spine. You survived, but a full recovery was pretty much off the table. Then it became a moot point, since a tidal wave was going to wipe out the entire city later that same day.”

“What happened?” A _tidal wave?_ The _entire city?_ How could that even happen? Missouri was smack dab in the middle of the U.S., for fuck’s sake! And _Jesus Christ_ , his _spine?_

“I tried to stop it. I don’t even know if I would have succeeded, since, well, since that’s when I found myself back in time, one day in the past. And I thought, I thought I could _stop_ it before it started, I could save you, and everybody, before Mardon had the chance to hurt anybody else.”

David sucked in a breath between his teeth. It sounded like he’d dodged a bullet, and he hadn’t even been aware of it. “It seems to me like you succeeded.”

Barry looked pained. “Time… finds ways to compensate. Otherwise…” He shook violently and David started forward reflexively; he looked ready to fall over, or fall apart, “Otherwise what’s to stop us from just… g-going back an-and f-fixing things?” His breathing was choked, every uneven breath a gasp.

Alarmed, David grabbed him by the shoulder and guided him to sit down with his back against the low wall that bordered the roof. He squatted in front of him and tried to find the words that would make this better, but felt that he could barely understand the problem, let alone fathom a solution. So instead he reached out and rested his hand on Barry’s knee – a paltry comfort, and wholly inadequate he felt, though it seemed to work for Barry, who marshalled his reserves of willpower after a minute or two and wiped the snot from his face

“I don’t even know why I’m such a mess right now,” Barry laughed, shaky, embarrassed, as he got to his feet. David felt like he had a couple of ideas.

“Go home, Allen. Get some rest.” David was once again shelving his questions for a later date, but he couldn’t in good conscience ask them now. Also, sleep sounded pretty heavenly, and David was not immune to its siren call.

Barry nodded absently, clearly agreeing reflexively without putting a lot of thought into what he was agreeing to. Then David nearly had a heart-attack when he turned around and ran off the side of the roof, but he was back a moment later, looking considerably more alert.

“Er… Captain, are you going to, you know, uh, tell anyone? About me?”

David side-eyed him, “I’m not in the business of outing meta-humans, Allen. We’ve been over this.”

“Yeah but… I’m also a vigilante, operating outside the law. When I hide my identity, there’s no accountability… but there’s no other way to do it, I can’t stand still when people are in danger, and I have to wear a mask in order to – “

“To protect your loved ones. I get it.” Barry still looked hesitant, so he repeated himself (and he, as a general rule, strongly disliked repeating himself but he would when it was important, and this was important). “I really, really do. This city needs the Flash; for what reason would I possibly out you?”

“Well, you _did_  have an Anti-Flash Taskforce, once.” A surprisingly cheeky response, David thought. Maybe it sounded like something The Flash would say.

“And now we know better.” His own rejoinder could use some work, but that’s what an adrenaline crash did to one’s ability to banter.

Barry hmmed, “Speaking of the Taskforce, can we call it the Meta-human Response Team instead?”

That was actually a really good point. He wondered why no one had thought to say anything sooner – he wondered why _Joe_ hadn’t said anything, when the Anti-MetaHuman Taskforce was his own idea. Was he overcompensating, trying to prevent people from looking too closely at Barry by taking a hard line against meta-humans? Even sleep-deprived, David could see that that plan could only backfire. “Sounds great. Do you know what else sounds great right now? Sleep. Sleep sounds really excellent. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mister Allen, it shall be taken care of. Now, go get some rest. I don’t want to see you set foot in – or _on_ \- this building for at least twenty-four hours.”

“Yessir!” Barry snapped a surprisingly professional salute before blasting back over the side of the roof in blur of light and motion and a gust of wind.

David took the opportunity to step closer to the edge and watch the yellow streak weave through the street below before it disappeared from sight. The sun was fully above the horizon now, and traffic was starting to pick up. He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment, not thinking of anything in particular but so grateful, so very very grateful that he was alive, that Rob was alive, that the sun could still rise over Central City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On why Barry is having this breakdown in front of Singh and not Iris or Joe: firstly, this is Singh’s POV and a single moment in time so we don’t know that he _hasn’t,_ and secondly, for the Team and his family he is trying to be strong and not add to their own grief.
> 
> Gosh, I felt like I had so much to say at the end in this note and now I can't think of anything. Well, I'll probably be editing this a bit in the next few days, I just _really_ wanted to finally post it.
> 
> Oh, I remember! If I knew how to set up a poll, I would: the question is, at what point would it make sense to post these Singh & Barry chapters as a separate story from Inertia? I probably already passed that point, and asking people in an author's note doesn't quite make sense, since the issue is whether or not Singh fans can easily find this work - if you're reading this message, you've obviously already found it... [UPDATE: The Singh chapters have been collected as a separate story, Internal Affairs, now up]
> 
> Lastly, here's a deleted scene that did not make it into the final cut of this story:
> 
> David's days became increasingly peppered by messages that were as bizarre as they were alarming. Case in point:
> 
> “ _Heeeeeeey_ , Captain Singh.” David had the distinct impression that Allen would have chosen to lean casually against a wall had there been such a wall handy. “Remember when I said that General Eiling knew I was a metahuman in a manner of speaking? Turns out he definitely knows. Also, there may or may not be a telepathic gorilla underneath the city - Joe’s still pretty shaken up about it; I know he won’t say anything to you, but if you could, maybe, cut him a little slack for a bit? Thanksbye”
> 
> “Wha - ALLEN!”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Internal Affairs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7331170) by [QuarticMoose](https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuarticMoose/pseuds/QuarticMoose)




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